


La route chante

by theviolonist



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:43:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 93,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1868346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1199475">it takes a while to settle down</a>] "He's dead," she said between sobs. "Elena, he's dead."</p><p>Elena crushed her tighter, unafraid to break any bones. "I know," she whispered. "I'm sorry."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [but_seriously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/gifts).



> **author's note:** i have a lot of stuff to say about this, but let's start with the easy ones: warnings for **minor character death, violence** , probably some **explicit sex** as well, a good chunk of it good ol' lesbian sex, also some **gaslighting** later in the story and **hallucinations**. almost none of this happens in this chapter, but you know. if you think i should warn for something else, please let me know!
> 
>  **general info about the story:** this will be constructed in two parts of about 80K each, each divided into about 5 parts. i'll try ('try' being the operative word here) to post one chapter per week; failing that, because editing is a bitch, i'll try and do one every two weeks. this is officially the sequel to wedding!fic aka [it takes a while to settle down](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1199475), as in, that's how this story started out. that being said, you don't need to have read itawtsd to understand this; all you need to know is that caroline and klaus hooked up at caroline's wedding about seven years prior to this, and even that is pretty clear from the story.
> 
>  **pairings** are as follows: this is a klaus/caroline story but it's primarily a story about caroline, which means that there is... not a lot of klaus in the first part, which contains: caroline/tyler, caroline/katherine, caroline/elena, and some klaus/caroline and hayley/elijah, as well as minor elijah/katherine. hayley is a major player and hate against her bores me, so if you're about that this is not the story for you.
> 
>  **now the important stuff:** this story is dedicated to my boo hannah aka but_seriously aka [highgaarden](http://highgaarden.tumblr.com) aka the bane of my existence, whom i love and adore and would gladly pee while she was in the room, that's how tight we are. as hannah is a baby and turning twenty (!) soon, which does not make her less of a baby but does make her a year older, this is a birthday gift! (in advance, yes. the hope is that i'll have finished posting the first part by the actual date of her birthday.) (also in thanks for her birthday gift for me, which was the _most important of fics_ aka GIRLS! spy au aka [look how all the kids have grown](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1479736). what is better, i ask you.) so: hannah, you beautiful motherfucker. may you enjoy this in all its depressing self-indulgence, and may we love each other and insult each other for years to come. i love you to death. that is sadly true.
> 
>  **note #345:** hannah, who also made [this amazing roadtrip mix](http://highgaarden.tumblr.com/post/87610125797/she-changes-the-weather-a-roadtrip-mix-for) for this fic, bless her tiny little talented heart, go listen to it and get feels everywhere.

**I. KAQ'CHA**

 

Half-empty, Caroline pondered; that glass was definitely half-empty. She had hesitated about actually drinking it —a glass of white wine at two am on a Tuesday night, really?— but remembering _why_ exactly she had felt the need to take out that bottle did the trick. She tipped the glass back, enjoying the slide of alcohol in her throat, spreading its welcome warmth inside her.

Outside the forest was silent, as much as forests can ever be silent; a calm emptiness reigned over the world, broken only by the multitude of noises nature produces at any moment. Caroline was trying not to pay attention, even though she could hear every small sound, leaves rustling in the wind, birds flapping their wings, the flow of blood in small animal bodies. Not him, though. If he was still there he was moving completely incognito; but that wouldn't be surprising. He'd learned over the years— they all had, even her. Ha. Little girly Caroline —who'd have thought? But she'd gotten stronger —faster, better, more resistant. She was still here today, after all.

Besides, wherever he was, he was probably only running around like the spectacular idiot he was, tearing some poor squirrel apart as a fucked-up way to wind down. It wasn't her job to worry about him anymore. She stared back down at her glass, squishing the liquid around a few times before taking a gulp. Maybe drinking wasn't such a good idea after all. She hadn't realized how sad she was before; it was only now starting to sink in, a leaden heaviness made even more uncomfortable by the alcohol, sour almost.

When she woke up the night had taken over the house, tendrils of shadows stuck in every corner. In the window the half-moon was bright, looked smooth even though it wasn't, made of gleaming porcelain. Caroline's head was pounding; her glass was empty, and Tyler wasn't back. She swore between her teeth. Well, shit.

She gingerly put on a pair of babouches and draped her coat around her shoulders, not bothering to put the sleeves on. The air outside was colder than she thought it would be; it slapped her in the face like everything was her fault. Caroline sucked in breath.

"Tyler?" she called. There was no echo, only the forest staring back at her, thrumming with quiet life. "Now isn't the time for a temper tantrum."

The forest didn't respond. If Caroline were human, she might've been afraid of it, the scraggly trees with their tentacular arms, the damp, mystical smell. She wasn't. She opened her ears, catching a handful of skittering heartbeats: rabbits, squirrels, owls and a few other birds. No wolves, though.

She considered going forward, deeper into the forest, but the night was cold and wet and her babouches were expensive, and silk, which Tyler knew. Besides, if all he did when she found him was bitch at her more, maybe it was better that he spent the night doing his Wild Man shtick. Maybe they'd be able to have a calmer conversation tomorrow.

She retreated into the house. It felt eery and menacing without any lights on, so Caroline switched on the living-room and the kitchen and put water on. She felt strangely jittery, if she was being honest with herself: not really panicked but like something was bound to go wrong at some point, an uncomfortable sort of foreboding that felt like nausea. She made herself a mug of tea, turned off the lights and went upstairs.

The sight of the king-size bed in the master bedroom looming from the corner of the corridor cut into her unexpectedly, and she had to grip on her mug to settle herself. She blinked back the tears prickling her eyes. Now wasn't the time to get emotional. In the end she chose one of the guest bedrooms, the one Elena had stayed in the few times she'd come, even though it took attempted murder or the threat of a supernatural pregnancy to get her to abandon the hellmouth of Mystic Falls and come visit them. She'd never understood why Caroline had accepted to go to Vermont, actually, but Caroline had never bothered to explain and now she didn't really know what she would have said. Love, maybe. It had seemed logical at the time.

The sheets were soft and cool and the pillows fluffed like Caroline liked, so it didn't take long for her to sink into a comfortable drowsiness. She set her mug on the bedside table and let herself drift off. Just before she was surrounded by blackness she felt a sudden thrill, like the beginning of a vision, the sharp outline of a face she knew but didn't remember; she pushed it down, and let sleep claim her.

—

It wasn't her who found him, in the end. Later she wished she had, so it would've made the whole thing more real. Her phone rang shrilly and jolted her out of a dream including Miucca Prada, the queen of England and a pack of startlingly gorgeous werewolves. She blinked blearily at her alarm on the nightstand: ten am. She picked up gingerly. So early, it could only be an emergency or someone who didn't know her.

"Caroline Lockwood," she said.

"Mrs Lockwood," the voice said, stiff and official, and Caroline bit her tongue not to say that she really didn't like being called that, "this is the Montpelier Police Department. I'm afraid we have bad news." There was a pause, maybe an hesitation. "If you'd come to the station we could explain it to you more in detail."

She didn't even have to think; in half a second she was out of bed, dressed, her hair brushed into something that could pass for a decent haircut, and panic beating into her like a wild heart.

"Is this about Tyler? Is he okay?"

The voice didn't change. "We'll tell you all you need to know at the station, Mrs Lockwood. Please be there as soon as possible."

Caroline nodded dumbly at the phone, anxiety crystallizing into a ball of lead in her stomach. Tyler was a big believer in those kind of things, she remembered —instincts, premonitions, that feeling like needles in your legs before you went to sleep. He always said she should follow her instincts, that it was who they were, _what_ they were, and Caroline usually snorted delicately and tilted her head, mocking. But maybe he was right. Maybe she should've—

She shook her head, trying to disturb her train of thought. She wouldn't know until she got there; until then it was all just theorizing. She slid into her car, resisting the urge to just run to the station, wind and adrenaline whipping the fear out of her veins. She would be fine. They would be fine. Tyler wasn't stupid, and it was years since anyone had tried —really _tried_ — to hurt them. Why wouldn't they be fine? She ignored too many red lights and watched the flash of the radar go off, uncaring. When she got to the station she left tire marks on the ground, parked haphazardly, blocking two other cars. She ran inside, her hair flying around her head.

Her heels clicked like gunshots on the floor of the police station. As soon as she saw the officer —the voice on the phone, Caroline recognized, catching a stream of murmurs between him and a subordinate—, the downward-pointed corners of his mouth and his dark, serious eyes, Caroline knew. She staggered backwards. She'd seen that look before, too many times, but—

"Mrs Lockwood. I'm Officer Vane."

Caroline nodded. She felt like all the feeling was gone from her body, like she was a doll whose strings had been cut, an actor at the end of a performance, empty, dispossessed. She thought again, _please don't call me that_ but this time it tasted like irony, something dark and unjust, the worst thing she could possibly have thought.

"Your husband…" She tuned him out, incapable or maybe unwilling of hearing anything, watched his mouth move through procedures and details she couldn't take in, "… very sorry for your loss."

Caroline blinked. Her fangs were aching in her mouth, someone was bleeding in a room nearby, a child. She waited for the tears but they didn't come, only a terrifying anger and an overwhelming tiredness, like a bat to the stomach.

"Where did you find him?" she asked, her voice white, brittle.

Officer Vane frowned slightly like maybe he'd said it before, but Caroline didn't care. "Joggers happened upon his body on the forest behind your property, Ma'am," he said. "I'm really sorry—"

"Yes," Caroline said, and then: "They can't go there. It's private property. It's ours."

It had been hard to make it, but it was: when they'd bought the house it had been the end of an endless hunt for the interior that would please her and a slice of nature so that Tyler could turn when he wanted. She hadn't thought she would use the forest much, didn't need to, but in the end she'd run there with him often, until eventually she started running by herself. There weren't a lot of animals to catch, but Caroline wasn't Elena; she'd never really been satisfied with blood pockets, however hard she tried. Breaking something's spine once in a while was always guaranteed to make her feel better, better than a mani-pedi at _Johanna's_ , even.

Officer Vane nodded with disaffected grief. "If you wish to—"

"I want to see the body," Caroline said. She felt the tears again and this time she didn't hold them back: they started dripping down her cheeks, pooling at the creases of her mouth. How messy, she thought remotely, how weak. But she didn't care. Her body, her soul —everything felt like it was under general anesthesia, with only the barest hint of fury peeking through, a lifeline.

Vane looked slightly abashed. "Of course," he said. "I understand. It's still at the scene, our forensic team isn't done yet, and I'm not supposed to—" He spared Caroline a look, "But I supposed we could make an exception."

He looked at Caroline to seek her approval. He wanted to be thanked, for his extracurricular kindness to be acknowledged, but Caroline just nodded.

She didn't know how much time passed before they took her to see Tyler's body. She was sitting on a chair in the police station for a while, and the receptionist gave her a plastic glass full of water that she stared at and didn't drink; the smell of blood intensified and then waned suddenly, like the child had left. Some of the officers threw her quick, pitiful glances that Caroline ignored. She didn't look nineteen anymore, not really, but it was hard to disguise the thin waist and lean, youthful cheeks: they were probably thinking, poor kid, so young, losing her husband like that. Usually she liked the prospect of never looking older than twenty-five, but today it felt heavy, like immortality was a dirty trick played on her behind her back.

Eventually she heard the rumble of a police car's engine and she was ushered out of the room and into the car's backseat. It smelled of stale food and sweat. She kept silent while Officer Vane and another officer, a Native-American woman with a leather charm around her neck, talked into the radio, her hands linked in her lap, not trusting herself to touch something without breaking it, or breaking herself. It felt as though if she pierced the bubble all the grief would swarm over her and bury her. Except — well. Bury her alive.

There was also, hovering around her, the remembrance of the night before, everything that had happened, the last words she'd said to Tyler, but that hurt more than anything else and Caroline did her best to keep them at bay. She thought: I never do the right thing at the right time, and this was like a crowning achievement, the worst possible outcome. Besides — besides, Tyler couldn't really be dead. She'd find a tourist in Tyler's clothes and his smell all over them, guts wrenched open and sure, it would be bad but it wouldn't be anything they hadn't done before, just another tiny slip-up. They'd move again, try a state they'd never been in, something new. Get a house. Find a new manicure place. It would be okay. They'd forget this in time —laugh about it, even.

She clambered gracelessly out of the police car, wrapping her arms around herself without thinking. She felt a little better now that she knew Tyler couldn't be dead and the idea had drilled into her brain, an absolute certainty, even though her hands were still shaking and her head still swimming. But she'd got out of bed in a hurry, hadn't even eaten anything, and now this fear… She would make him pay for it when she found him, after she hugged him so hard his bones cracked. She'd punch him in the face and tell him what a stupid animal he was, not coming home, not telling her anything, pouting stupidly until he got a midnight craving for human flesh. Who did that? Well, apart from her and all her friends, that is.

She followed the officers through the forest, avoiding every root that stuck out on instinct, her heels digging into the damp ground. The female officer looked back at her once or twice, one eyebrow furrowed like she was worried Caroline would trip over her own feet and land face-first in the mud, like it wasn't bad enough that her husband had died. Caroline gave her a wobbly smile at her and she seemed surprised. Right, Caroline thought. They think Tyler is dead. They think _I_ think Tyler is dead. Except Tyler couldn't be dead: the only thing in that whole supernatural creature deal that made it a good bargain was the promise of immortality. Once Klaus—

"Are you sure you want to see this?" Officer Vane asked. "I have to warn you, it's—"

Caroline nodded, and he moved out of the way.

All at once it cracked, a deep ridge building from the top of her body to the bottom, and all the thoughts Caroline had been keeping at bay landed on her shoulders like a ton of bricks when her eyes settled on the corpse's face. _His_ face. Tyler couldn't be dead but there he was, naked like he had just turned back, his face pressed sideways against the ground. His eyes were open, his mouth ajar, he was trying to take a breath, trying to scream maybe… and there were deep lacerations running from his exposed shoulder to his waist, not claws, definitely not claws, something else, more cruel… Caroline whimpered, surprising herself when she heard the sound resonate in the silence. The female officer turned her face away. Caroline fell to her knees in the mud.

"Tyler," she said, stupidly, to revive him, wake him up. She reached for him to shake him, but when her hand came into contact with the skin of his cheek it was cold and damp, sticky with blood.

Officer Vane said something behind her about not touching the body and she could feel hands on her shoulders, pulling her back. She wanted to say it wasn't a body, that it was _Tyler_ , for fuck's sake, that most of their friends had been there at one point in their lives, lying on the ground with their neck snapped but they had _survived_ , you understand, because they were different, they didn't die that easily… She opened her mouth to say it, unthinking, but then she saw, in the trail of the lacerations, that his chest was open and his heart had been pulled out, torn away. She felt bile rising to her throat, acid and unpleasant.

"I —" she started, and then she was leaning against a nearby tree, heaving her guts out on her own feet. That's a ruined pair of shoes, she thought dazedly, looking down at them.

The female officer was patting her back reassuringly, and behind Caroline's back they were zipping Tyler into a bodybag. Caroline thought about going back and telling them to stop it, to give him back to her so that she could see what kind of injuries they were, what it might all mean —Tyler clearly hadn't torn out his own heart— but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Besides, by now they probably thought she was a crazy grieving widow, they wouldn't let her near him again. Or— maybe that was what people did? Caroline tried to remember other deaths, her friends wrecked and kneeling, and came up blank. Her brain felt like it had been scrubbed with bleach, the painful kind.

Officer Vane ambled near them again, holding a plastic bag at his side. He scrubbed his face with the back of his hand, deep wrinkles digging in his forehead. It clearly wasn't his best day either but then, Caroline thought absurdly, at least his husband wasn't dead. She felt a burning spear of pain digging through her stomach at the thought, and almost moaned.

"We found this a few hundred feet away from the body," Vane said, holding out the bag. Caroline opened it, her body working on automatic: his clothes, folded like she'd bullied him into those first few years, and on top of them his wedding ring. "It seems like he was naked before he encountered his attacker. Do you know why that might be?"

Caroline shook her head no. She took the ring in her fingers, suddenly registering the absence of hers on her own hand. She hadn't had the time this morning, and she wasn't in their bed; the ring was still sitting in the nightstand drawer, next to her water bottle. Nausea lurched in her stomach again. She closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Vane said, sounding it, "but you'll have to come back with us to the station. There are papers to sign and we'd like to talk to you about the circumstances of your husband's death, I'm sure you'll understand." He touched her arm briefly; Caroline did her best not to break all the bones of his hand. "We'll find who did this, I can guarantee you that."

Caroline felt like she might have looked up and asked, _can you?_ because he couldn't, he really couldn't, but her head felt like it was made of lead. She nodded again. She remembered thinking before coming that no one had tried to hurt them in a long time. Unexpectedly, and for the first time in years, she thought about Katherine: once she'd said to Caroline, in the murky darkness of the Grill where they weren't exactly enemies, her mouth twisted in a smile, "The day you stop being on your guard is the day you die." Fancy that, Katherine being right.

She realized belatedly that Vane was waiting for an answer from her. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.

"Of course," she said. "If I can just…"

She wasn't sure how she was going to finish that sentence, but Vane said "Sure," nodding his head, and he and his acolyte took a few steps back and started walking back to the car, leaving her behind. Caroline took a breath. When she looked over, the body was being loaded onto the coroner's van, Tyler's face covered with crisp dark plastic. Caroline clenched her firsts not to lunge for it, tear it out the coroner's hands and run away with it folded over her shoulder. She didn't need Tyler's body. She needed Tyler.

The realization hit her in the gut and all the latent guilt she'd been keeping under wraps came bubbling up, obstructing her throat. This time instead of silent tears it was deep, painful sobs racking through her body, shaking her bones like they were a two-bit necklace. Caroline put her hand on the bark of a tree, resting all her weight on it, fighting not to go down on her knees again. This wasn't over; it wasn't like she could go back to the house and hide under her — _their_ , her mind pressed on meanly— blankets until the world didn't seem like it was shrouded in shadows. Tyler had been killed, and they were predators: the rule had always been to hunt what hunts you.

She breathed in shakily. Opening her ears wide, she tried to pick out unfamiliar noises on the off-chance that the murderer had hung around to make sure his job was done, but there was nothing. Whoever they were, they were probably long gone. She traced the scent of blood back to Tyler's heart, remembering she hadn't seen it on the ground next the Tyler's body, but when she found it there was only a pool of coagulated blood, the organ gone. Caroline felt the need to retch, but her stomach was empty, just like her tearducts. She didn't even have the strength to feel angry anymore, just tired, winded like she'd run the vampire version of a marathon. She rested her hands on her knees, just for a minute. Her tears were falling on the damp leaves with a ticking clock sound. Caroline unfolded, and turned on her heels to go back to the car.

The ride back to the station was silent. The female officer passed a tissue to Caroline, which she tore to long, even white shreds after wiping her eyes. Maybe she could ask Bonnie, see if Tyler was still here in ghost form. She hoped not, for his sake, but there was still a pounding, resounding hope in her chest that he had, so that she could tell him how wrong she had been, how sorry she was. Selfish, she thought, but she'd gotten used to that, this idea that she was selfish. She had worse flaws.

At the station they stuck her in an interrogation room with a cup of tepid coffee so that she "wouldn't be disturbed," even though Caroline knew as well as anyone the wife was always the first suspect. Her mother hadn't been a police officer for fifteen years for nothing, after all, even though in Mystic Falls the correct assumption was most often that the arch-villain of the week was the one who'd done it. There weren't a lot of vampires here in Vermont, though, and even though the few werewolf tribes sometimes got into scuffles their system for explaining it away as bear attacks was about as foolproof as it was stupid. Caroline has snorted at it at the beginning, then gotten used to it, the way you get used to everything.

She didn't have a lot to give to the officer —not Vane, she registered absently— who asked her what kind of enemies Tyler ("her husband," they kept saying that) might've had, or why he was running outside in the middle of the night ("We had a fight." He gave her an unsubtle, oblique look), stark naked, or what kind of deranged freak would tear someone's heart out ( _you wouldn't believe how often that happens,_ Caroline thought, but didn't say). The only time she perked up and really paid attention was when he slid a couple of pictures in her direction. On them was a knife, its half-moon blade jagged and sharp and covered with blood Caroline had to assume was Tyler's. When she looked closer she saw that the handle was covered in symbols. They reminded her vaguely of something, but she couldn't pin it down.

"We recovered this not far from your husband's body. We're having the forensic team check it out, but I think it's safe to say that this knife is what was used to—" he hesitated, "hurt him. Is it yours?" he asked her.

Caroline shook her head. Well, even if she hadn't been sure, this would've made her: there was nothing mundane about Tyler's death. She was 90% sure it was some kind of supernatural plot, _again_. You never did get away from Mystic Falls, did you?

"No, I'm sorry," she said eventually, when she realized he was waiting for an actual answer. "I've never seen this before."

He didn't look like he entirely believed her, but Caroline had neither the means nor the energy to try and convince him. She committed the blade to memory, as well as the tiny markings at the bottom of the photograph that might help her find it when she would eventually have to steal it — not that the police station was big by any stretch of imagination, but you never knew. Technology, these days.

"Was there any tension with your husband?" asked the officer again, who apparently believed in being as heavy-handed as possible when leading an investigation. "Anything you were fighting over recently?" Caroline fought the urge to roll her eyes.

"I told you; we had an argument. He decided he wanted to get some air, take a walk, and I didn't stop him."

"What was the argument about?"

Caroline crossed her arms over her chest. "Nothing to kill someone over, if that's what you're asking."

He hmed in an annoying way. He asked her a few other questions, and Caroline went back to half-tuning him out, and turning her hypotheses about who'd killed Tyler in her mind. Once in a while her thoughts skidded to a stop and she'd remember something about him, the way he hugged her from behind when she —rarely— demeaned herself to actually cooking, that annoying tick he had of putting on his shoes without socks when he was going to turn, that kiss on her shoulder, once, before they got the house, that had —not burned her to the bone, not like… —but spread a comforting warmth through her body, like a cashmere blanket.

She turned an ear back to the officer; better that than those memories. Each of them was like a dagger to the chest, like being stabbed repeatedly with that fucking knife. "… we'll need you to stay in the state of Vermont for as long as this investigation is going on, I'm sure you understand. We might need to contact you again for further information. If you prefer to stay in your house we can provide you with security for a while. It's unlikely the perpetrator will go back to the scene for this type of crime, but it's a necessary precaution, and we don't want you to feel unsafe."

Caroline shook her head. "It's fine. I'll be fine," she said. It probably wasn't very convincing, but the officer nodded anyway. Caroline took a sip of her coffee, then winced when she realized it was even more disgusting cold.

The officer said a few other things about her not being able to get Tyler's body back for the funeral until they had an autopsy, and then maybe some follow-ups, but that it should be available in two weeks' time at the latest and how sorry they were, that he couldn't go into the ground sooner rather than later. Caroline felt her anger simmering back up. She wondered if Tyler would've liked to be cremated; they'd never talked about it, never considered… Maybe they weren't nineteen anymore, but they were still kids at heart, kids playing at being grown-ups, stuck in that eternal age between high school and the rest of their life, constantly on their toes waiting for some supernatural evil to swoop in and disturb their lives again. Well. There they were.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," the officer said as he led her out of the interrogation room. "All my condolences."

Caroline didn't have the courage to thank him, so she didn't.

—

The first thing Caroline did when she got back was pack her bag. There was probably time before she had to leave, and it would've been better to stay a little and wait until the police grew bored of keeping an eye on her, but she had spent the whole day at the police station and every step she took in the house felt like Tyler was going to walk around the corner. Caroline's heart was wearing, getting more and more used as it alternatively got flushed with hope and torn to shreds by despair. She thought she'd gotten so used to death, but they were right; there was no getting used to losing somebody you loved. Never got old.

She had a moment of hesitation in front of her shoe closet, trying to decide what kind of heels one put on when playing Nancy Drew In Vampire-Land, but even that felt sour. She grabbed her wedding ring on the bedside table and after turning it between her hands for a few seconds, put it on. They were going to have questions enough as it was, no need to pile on more. Besides, Caroline wasn't sure she felt up to explaining. It was bad enough that she had to go back to freaking _Mystic Falls_ after she declaring an lifelong veto on meeting her friends in any place that at the very least wasn't Virginia. She should've known better.

She sat on the bed, trying not to burst into tears again. She took her head into her heads, trying to shake the thought. But… who liked pretentious old jewelry and to tear peoples' hearts out? It would've taken Elena twenty seconds to get to that conclusion, but Caroline liked to think she knew better, was less prejudiced. Though she couldn't really say that now, could she? She squeezed her eyes closed. There was no use thinking about it now. When she was there she would do what needed to be done, whatever that was. Eye for an eye, she took her pointers from the fucking Bible — he would like that. She slammed her suitcase shut.

In the end getting out of Montpelier and to the airport was even easier that she'd thought; the police security was loose at best and nothing but the sleekest, most discrete cars would do for Caroline freaking Forbes. Truth was, she'd never really gotten used to wearing Tyler's name —Klaus be damned, he'd been right, as usual— but now she felt a little guilty, calling herself that in her head when his body wasn't even cold. She turned her face to the window, looking out into the cold, impassive night. By morning she would be back in Mystic Falls. The thought made her want to retch.

In the Burlington airport the noise and the sharp sunlight gave her a headache almost as soon as she stepped out of the car and slipped on a pair of huge sunglasses. She probably didn't look like much, anyway —it wasn't like she'd gotten much sleep in the last few days. There were probably big purple circles under her eyes and she felt like she might keel over at any moment; felt like a zombie, walking through a world that was only half-real. A Tyler-less world. Strange, she'd never thought about it. She bought a plane ticket under one of the fake passports she always kept in their safe just in case and the woman at the desk gave her a tight, exhausted smile that Caroline returned out of pure habit. She checked her luggage, bought a blueberry muffin even though she wasn't hungry, just to occupy her hands, and settled on one horrible metal chairs to wait for take-off.

It was only when someone, a haughty-looking blond woman in a Vera Wang pantsuit, cut their finger with a page of her _Vogue_ that Caroline realized she hadn't drunk for nearly two days now. She hadn't even taken any bloodbags with her for the trip. She wasn't hungry per se, but there was the familiar tug in her stomach, her fangs pressing down on the unbroken skin, itching to come out. Caroline forced herself to think about something disgusting, like Damon or her dead grandma's warts, and felt slightly better. She grabbed a _Vogue_ for herself at the stand, because if she wasn't going to have a snack, she was damn well going to have her daily dose of high fashion. ( _Tyler is dead_ was echoing in every hollow of her body, but she did her best to ignore it. That was what her mother believed in, keeping busy when you were grieving, and mother's recipes were always the best, that was common knowledge.)

The plane ride was bumpy and uncomfortable; Caroline kept falling asleep and jolting awake every time her forehead hit the cool surface of the window. Beneath her the earth was a sprawling, vaguely expressionist painting, big splotches of color, green, yellow and broken grey. Caroline dozed off into a vague dream that wasted no time turning into a nightmare, and by the time she was halfway through tearing out Tyler's heart herself, a smirking figure standing behind her, holding her hips, the pilot announced they were landing.

Dawn was barely breaking but Caroline gripped the handle of her suitcase, found a bleary-eyed cabbie to load it in his trunk and managed to get to Mystic Falls, where she asked to be left in the square. Possibly it was to punish herself, she thought, still cold and uncomfortable from that dream, but it wasn't like she could really wait on her mom's doorstep and tell her her husband was dead. They'd had enough traumatizing conversations to last them a lifetime, for God's sake.

In the end she spent a while walking through the town, watching as the sun imploded and slowly turned bloodred, dappling the leaves with droplets of light. When blinds started swinging open and there was a possibility that she might happen upon someone she used to know, she headed into the forest. It was nearly four when she found herself at the Salvatore house, ambling slowly for the front door. She prayed silently that Damon wouldn't answer the one to answer the door.

She sucked in a breath, trying not to break out into tears again. She raised her hand and knocked. There was a patter of footsteps.

"Caroline?"

Caroline gave as close as a smile as she could. "I need your help, El."

—

Elena ushered her inside, folding a blanket around her shoulders and sticking a mug of burning coffee in her hands before she could say a word. The strong smell energized Caroline somewhat, warmed her to the bones. Sometimes Elena was a shit friend, but sometimes she was really kind of great.

"What happened?" she asked. She had a freaky sort of sixth sense for knowing when someone was in supernatural trouble, which was probably due to it happening every other week. Inconveniences of being a doppelgänger, Caroline guessed.

She took a swig of coffee, shivering in pleasure when it slid down her throat. It still wasn't blood, but God it felt good. "Mm, that's delicious, thanks. What are you doing here?"

"I should be the one asking you," Elena pointed out, still looking a little freaked out. "This is my house," she reminded Caroline, "remember?"

Caroline shrugged; in her head it had always been the Salvatore Manor of Brooding, and it would probably always be.

"Where's Tyler?"

Caroline winced. Her hands started shaking violently; she put down the coffee before it sloshed all over her hands. She would be no help to Tyler with second-degree burns.

Elena, who for someone who was occasionally spectacularly oblivious to other people's feelings, also had serious empathy when she wanted, sensed her discomfort. "What is it? Did something happen?"

Caroline let herself slump into the couch, closing her eyes for a second. "I —" The words stayed stuck in her throat. "He's dead, Elena."

For a second Elena didn't say anything, shell-shocked, and her reaction brought back everything Caroline had been keeping at bay. She felt like her body had suddenly turned to paper and she was going to fold and tear, taken apart by the violence of her pain. Tears filled her eyes; she wiped them away angrily, refusing to give in.

Elena sat down too, her thigh pressed against Caroline's. "Oh my God," she said softly. "He's not—" She didn't seem to know how to finish her own sentence, so she just let it trail into nothing. "Are you okay?"

Caroline croaked out a little disbelieving laugh, and Elena rushed in to correct, "I mean, of course you're not okay, I just—"

"I was so horrible to him," Caroline whispered. "The night before he died. We had a fight."

"That's not—" Elena squeezed her eyes closed, and when she opened them back up they were dark and full of soft, comforting pity. "It's not your fault, you know that?" Caroline didn't say anything. Elena looked around her, searching for something, and Caroline only understood when she said, "Do you want to get drunk? We should get drunk. I'm going to call Bonnie. She's in town, I don't know if I told you. She's staying with her dad."

For a second Caroline thought about telling her not to move, reaching for her and getting lost in her embrace until sleep swallowed her again, because Elena had always the one from whom she'd needed and gotten both the worst and the best things. But in the end she did want to see Bonnie, especially since the three of them being the same place was such a rare occasion these days; maybe the joy of seeing her again would make the heavy, burning feeling in her chest a little more bearable.

They started drinking well before Bonnie got there. Elena unearthed one of Stefan's old bottles of pretentious whisky and two tumblers and slumped back into the couch, hooking her ankle around Caroline's. Her presence was as intoxicating as always, but for once Caroline gave in to it and it felt good, better, like slathering butter over a burn. After the first three glasses she had trouble remembering what it was she was even sad about; she just felt like she was stuck under a rock and the whisky was making it strangely comfortable, and Elena was wrapped around her, her lips under Caroline's ear and her hand on Caroline's hip, because she didn't always know the right words but when she touched you it was like hugging the sun, like swallowing something warm and reassuring and slightly overwhelming. Caroline kissed the smooth skin of her cheek without thinking.

"Where's Stefan?" she asked, slurring a little.

Elena shrugged, fluid. "Who knows. Last I heard he was taking a bro-trip with Damon so that they can have heart-to-hearts about whatever it is they fight about," she said vaguely. _You_ , Caroline thought, but didn't say.

The door opened and Bonnie appeared at the door, wearing a light brown dress that made her skin look luminous. The sight of her made Caroline feel better than she'd thought it would, and she wondered why they'd been so distant during all these years. Bonnie wasn't a big fan of Tyler —well, of Tyler being Caroline's husband. Maybe Caroline should have listened to her; maybe then her heart wouldn't be broken —again— and she wouldn't be back in Mystic Falls getting drunk on whiskey and thoughts of revenge, crying in the arms of her best friends. Oh well.

"I see you've started without me," Bonnie said in her soft, solar voice.

Caroline smiled blurrily from the couch. "We're sad," she said.

Bonnie frowned, pushing a small suitcase against the coat hanger near the door. "Yeah, Elena said it was an emergency. What's going on? Did something happen? Why are you back?"

The alcohol-induced euphoria slowly drained from Caroline's veins, and Elena's arm tightened around her waist. "Tyler…" she swallowed. "Tyler was murdered."

Bonnie took a step backwards, hitting her heels against the half-stair. She bit her lip. "What?"

Caroline reached a hand for her. "Tomorrow," she said. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. You'll see…" she started, and wondered how she'd meant to finish that sentence, _you'll see, it's unbelievably depressing_ or _you'll see, you won't believe it_ or maybe something else, something she couldn't remember.

Bonnie nodded gently. "Okay." She took the bottle from Elena's hands and poured them each a drink. They raised their glasses and clinked them, even though there wasn't anything to drink to.

It was better, with them; not good, but better, better than her big empty house in freaking _Vermont_ , better like being in high school and only having the weight of your own world on your shoulders, but with people to wear it and complain about it with you. It was like not having to take responsibility for anything anymore, not for fighting with Tyler and letting him spend the night outside, not for not knowing who killed him, not for drinking until they passed out and forgetting about death just a little, just for a second. When Bonnie and Elena were there they formed a sort of human, girl-shaped wall against all the pain and darkness that was threatening to barrel in from the outside, always on Caroline's tail.

"I love you guys," she slurred towards the end of the evening, before Bonnie decided that if they drank another bottle, vampires or not vampires, they were going to fall into an ethylic coma and she didn't want be the one to explain that to Caroline's mom. "And besides," she said sensibly, "Stefan is going to kill you for drinking all his good booze."

"He deserves it," Elena said blurrily, though Caroline couldn't determine whether it was for something specific she didn't know about or for the general fuckery he'd brought into their lives since he'd decided, so many years ago, that Elena was the Juliet to his bloodsucking Romeo.

Someone put Elena and her to bed in Stefan's ridiculous king-size antique monstrosity, probably Bonnie, since she a) didn't have a vampire metabolism and therefore hadn't drunk all that much, b) was infinitely more responsible than the rest of them, and c) might be an actual angel reincarnated in human form, Caroline wasn't sure. So there were no cricks and badly-situated bruises when they woke up at four in the afternoon the next day, but the hangover was there, and for a second as she blinked awake, roused by the harsh light streaming in from the half-open window, Caroline felt violently grumpy and displeased and _normal_. Of course, that was before she remembered the previous day and everything started aching again.

She hung her head down, feeling like it was suddenly weighing a hundred pounds in addition to having a metal bar boring through it. The girls were still sleeping when she looked back to the bed, Bonnie with a hand curled around Elena's thigh and Elena sprawled half over her, so Caroline tiptoed out of the room and went in search of some blood for breakfast. The house was remarkably less creepy when it was Damon-less and Katherine wasn't soaking in one of the many bathtubs, which for some reason seemed to be her activity of choice whenever she decided to wreak havoc on their lives. She found some blood in the cellar freezer and gulped down two bags, almost buzzing with relief when the cold liquid spread in her body. It wasn't quite the animal blood she'd used to drink in Vermont, and of course it didn't compare to fresh human blood, but that had been out of the question for years and she'd only slipped once or twice or twenty times. She rested her legs against the freezer, eyes slowly getting accustomed to the darkness of the basement-slash-torture chamber. _Tyler is dead_ , the thought happened upon her without any warning. She slid down to the ground, trying to breathe right instead of letting panic seize her chest.

She didn't even realize she was crying until the tears started falling on her hands, big fat drops and there were sobs racking her chest and she was pathetic, she didn't like it, she never liked being like that but Tyler was _dead_ , Tyler who had been her husband even though he never had been, not really, not even that day in the church when she'd walked down the aisle with her thighs hurting, her lips bruised… but she'd loved him, she really had, and besides she'd known him forever and he hadn't deserved to die, none of her childhood friends deserved to die, not so soon and not in such horrible ways, they just didn't. The injustice of it struck her: how long since Tyler and her had stopped making waves, stopped getting involved in the supernatural wars? How long since they'd given up so much, after their lives had already been passed through the shredder and distorted into unnatural shapes? And she'd even been ready to—

"Caroline?" Elena's voice echoed in the darkness. "Are you there?"

Caroline hiccuped; tried to stop sobbing, and found out she couldn't. Footsteps: Elena walking towards her, and on her heels Bonnie, though Bonnie stayed standing when Elena crouched in front of her, held Caroline's gaze, her eyes deep and dark and unreadable, like she knew…

"Caroline," Caroline's gaze snapped back to Elena, holding her hands, "Care…"

Caroline let Elena wrap her in an embrace but didn't return it for a while, their hands trapped in between them, crying helplessly… until eventually she reached for Elena and dug her fingers into the fabric of her sweatshirt, into her back, trying to find something solid to hold on to.

"He's dead," she said between sobs. "Elena, he's dead."

Elena crushed her tighter, unafraid to break any bones. "I know, Care," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

Bonnie hovered in the shadows, uncertain of what to do; eventually she joined their embrace and Caroline relaxed, started realizing that her face was completely wet with tears and blood. Her friends looked tired, their eyes ringed black and their faces drawn, even though Elena hadn't aged a day, of course. Bonnie was the odd one out, actually, but Caroline only realized that now because she was beautiful, too beautiful, and Caroline felt hundreds of years old with the weight of grief. (Bonnie, who consistently refused to be turned, who would probably have to die before they even got wise, who would have to drift away if she wanted a human life, children and a husband and no more blood, but who maybe wouldn't have the strength to, if she was here today…)

"I can't believe he's dead," she said again, feeling rigged with shrapnel.

Elena rested back on her heels, scrubbed a hand over her face. "I know," she said, even though she didn't —but she was so used to knowing everything, or to pretend, Caroline let it slide.

Of course it was Bonnie who said, "You still haven't told us what happened," and a cold panic washed over Caroline, because she didn't know, did she? There were only vague leads, a project of revenge that she knew would eat her whole and would eat anyone she took with her.

Caroline fought the urge to collapse on Elena's chest again, roar and rage and tear the flesh off her own cheeks so that that pain would overwhelm the other one inside her, rotting in her bowels and slowly seeping into the marrow of her bones, which she had thought were safe now that Klaus was gone. Turned out she was wrong. Not really a new feeling, either.

"Yeah," she said, and was surprised to feel under her fingers that she was still crying, tears leaking out of her as though to rid her of the excess sadness that her body couldn't handle. Some survival instincts. "Yeah, you're right."

"No more alcohol," Bonnie said mock-sternly, and Elena breathed her little breathy laugh, like she was trying to seduce someone.

Upstairs the sunlight had tamed to a softer shine that didn't hurt Caroline as much as she would have wanted it to. They settled at the kitchen table with strong, bitter coffee —heaven compared to both the station mixture and the airport goo, and probably another impingement on Stefan's collection of pretentious Italian foodstuffs— and a few swallows didn't quite restore Caroline, but made her feel marginally better. Elena and Bonnie pretended not to be waiting, sneaking glances at her.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "I don't know much more than you, guys. We—" she couldn't help but look down, "we had a fight, he went outside, to turn, I thought, or take a walk or something… at two am he wasn't back and I called for him but he didn't answer. I thought — I don't know what I thought. Then the next morning I get a call from the police and Tyler's dead in our backyard, with his heart torn out."

Bonnie's eyes boggled slightly; she squeezed Caroline's hand over the table. Elena was staring hard at her cup.

"Did you see him?"

The memory brought back the heaving in Caroline's chest. She fought the urge to rush to the sink and puke out all the nourishing blood. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry," said Bonnie, but Caroline had trouble paying attention, distracted by the hot, burning anger again. For some reason she'd thought the blood would assuage it a little but instead it was back, more incandescent than ever. She'd always been the monstrous one, after all, out of the three of them: the one who'd taken up her panther skin the most easily, despite how it had happened. She wouldn't give her fangs up for anything, especially now that they were going to help her tear the bastard who had killed her husband to shreds.

"… did it?"

Caroline jolted out of her daydream: heads rolling on the murky forest patch behind her house, the murderer's blood dripping on her bottom lip. "Sorry, what?"

Elena gave a look. "Do you think that Klaus did it?"

There was an awkward silence, and for a second Caroline forgot that they didn't know what had happened the day of her wedding, thought that they were judging her on that one colossal mistake, Klaus on his knees behind her, pressing his cheek against the knobs of her spine. But no — it was only the misadventure in the woods the first time, all that tension finally acted upon.

She sighed. "I don't know. He told me — he told Tyler, too, that he was done coming after us, but who knows with Klaus. I don't think it's his style."

"Well, tearing hearts out _is_ what he does," Bonnie said in her annoying holier-than-thou, I-hate-to-remind-you voice. Caroline suspected she'd never seen the appeal of the whole Klaus thing either; but she couldn't really blame her. He _had_ been their mastermind evil of the week once, after all.

"Wait a second," she said.

She climbed upstairs and grabbed her bag; back at the table she spread the irritating officer's pictures of the knife in front of her friends. "This was in the forest too," she said. "And Tyler's heart was missing. Oh, and his clothes were further from the body than normal, given than he was turned back when he was killed. Klaus is—" she grasped for an adjective, couldn't find one, "but he doesn't eat his victims' hearts, does he? I assume that's what happened."

Elena did a who-knows-with-this-creep face that Caroline didn't resent her and actually found a little ironic given that she'd spent most of her supernatural life dating Asshole McCreep and The Ripper.

"And he's a hybrid too," Bonnie pointed out. "If he wanted to kill Tyler for whatever reason he could probably do it as a werewolf. Wouldn't that be easier?"

Caroline frowned. "Not sure. He —Tyler had lacerations on his chest, but they didn't look like wolf to me."

Elena turned one of the pictures of the knife in her hands. "What's with that knife anyway?" she asked, squinting to decipher the symbols on the handle.

"No idea," Caroline shrugged. She turned to Bonnie. "I thought you might know, or if not you, one of the books in Stefan's library."

"Oh, so that's how it is," Elena gave her a half-grin. "You only love me for my boyfriend's books." She screwed her face up as soon as she said 'boyfriend', like she wasn't sure how true that was. Caroline felt like telling her not to worry, that it probably would be again at some point in the future, but Elena's love life was no longer her prerogative to bitch over, not really.

She tilted her head, electing to forget the pain for as long as it would let her. "You got me."

From the corner of her eye she saw that Bonnie was looking tense, like there was something she wanted to say but wasn't sure she could.

"What is it?"

Bonnie started, lost in a world Caroline probably couldn't imagine. She'd been surprised, in Vermont, when some memories had started to fade only to be replaced by the immensities of dark green stretching to the horizon's end—before she'd realized that she was going to live forever, of course, and her brain needed space for the new memories to settle into, a clear-cut rotation so that she wouldn't let old sadnesses blacken and sour inside of her.

"Nothing, it's just—" Bonnie looked down for a second, briefly embarrassed, "I need to go back home. To New York, I mean," she added, as though Caroline didn't know. She must have seen a response of some kind on Caroline's face, because she continued quickly, "I mean, I would stay if I could, but I've been here for a week already and I've only had this job for four months, if I don't go back I'll get fired, and then…"

She let her sentence trail off, implying a endless spool of consequences that Caroline couldn't help but imagine, out of habit for the worst: then, without steady income, she would lose her apartment, and the witch community in New York would start buzzing with anxiety at losing the Anchor, and admonish her once they found out that she was once again embroiled in complicated supernatural altercations involving vampires and werewolves, whom it was better to avoid if one wanted to stay out of trouble… What Bonnie had now wasn't a common life but it seemed almost ordinary to Caroline, off-balancingly human.

"Of course," she said when she realized that Bonnie was waiting for her blessing. "I totally understand. It's enough that you're here now, and that you were here yesterday," she said, and then, when confronted with Bonnie's worried earth-colored eyes, "seriously. Maybe you'll dig up some weird knife like this one in the dark corners of the MOMA, who knows."

"There aren't really any dark corners," Bonnie said, as though she couldn't help it. She caught herself, smiled. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

Caroline waved a hand. "Don't be. I'm not going to wallow," she said, even though sometimes she felt like it was the only option: to lie down and just let her body rot with guilt and sadness until she could find Tyler somewhere in the murky waters of half-being. But she was stronger than that.

Bonnie gave her a small, slow smile. "Good. And if you swing by New York one of these days…" She waved a hand to encompass, maybe, Elena and the rest of that godforsaken town that Caroline probably would never hate, because it had seen too many of her firsts, "you know. My couch is always open," she darted an amused look at Caroline, "and my library, humble as it is."

Caroline giggled; the sound was unexpected but it felt good in her throat, slightly alien. She slapped a hand over her mouth but couldn't seem to keep it in. After a minute the others joined in and they started laughing, holding their sides in Stefan and Damon's kitchen, half-slumped over the wooden table. They probably looked ridiculous but it was better than anything could've been in the wake of something as cosmically _wrong_ as the death of Tyler Lockwood, of all people.

In the end they decided that the investigating would wait until after Bonnie had caught her plane the morning after, and that the evening would be dedicated to catching up. They settled back in the living-room, robbing Stefan's cellar of slightly more dignified beverages —red wine that probably cost more per bottle than Caroline made in the years she bothered to work—, and collapsed in a tangled heap on the couch. Caroline sat cross-legged on instinct and felt strange about it when she realized, like she was back to being the eighteen-year-old baby vampire who was worried she would tear out more throats than the rulebook allowed, so, so worried she would do something wrong. She had done plenty wrong, but if this night was any indication some people still loved her.

There were awkward moments: whenever Tyler came up and the glacial shroud of grief enveloped Caroline and made it impossible to talk; when Bonnie made an off-handed comment about Jeremy and Elena seemed to remember that he, too, was walking the streets of New York and occasionally making a rest stop at Bonnie's door, their strange co-dependent relationship, not quite loving but not quite loveless either, that Elena and Caroline couldn't pretend to understand; when Elena mentioned Damon and Caroline couldn't help but snort, because she didn't —had never, and probably never would— do forgiveness well. But on the whole, and when they avoided the subject of men more or less completely, it was the most informative, light-hearted evening had spent in… much too long a time, actually. Caroline hadn't realized how much she'd missed it.

And sure, she missed her babouches and all the expensive clothing she'd amassed back home, and the pictures of Tyler and her where she always, annoyingly and whatever she did to remedy it, looked like the anemic doll to his Greek god, and she missed the warmth of him and the violence of their arguments and his unconcerned cruelty and the way he never minded her borrowing his sweaters even though she drowned in them, stretching the arms and staining the sleeves when she decided on a whim that she didn't like the eggplant color on the kitchen and wanted to try something a little more dignified, more adult, cream maybe? And the way he was fond of and exasperated and frustrated by her, and the way she could read every expression on his face, so much that she sometimes wanted —sometimes _had_ — to yell at him to stop being such an open book, jeez, couldn't he just hold it in for once instead of bleeding his messy emotions all over her Persian rugs.

And she missed the endless panorama of evergreens, the hills and the cold that stuck to the windows on winter days, the roaring fires she bullied Tyler into making for her, the way her breath condensed on the glasses she'd bought expressly for that purpose, though she would probably deny it to the grave… and she missed the forest behind their house and she missed their house, too, even though for the first year she had hated it and woke up every morning wanting to move, wanting to come back to a _city_ where there would be noise and bustle and the dull thumping of blood everywhere you turned to, that house that she'd finally started to love without realizing it, as it filled with memories, sweet and sour and in-between, and visits from her mother and Elena once in a blue moon and even Stefan but never Bonnie, who was always too busy in the city, and didn't really like their being married besides… and she missed all her _things_ that she knew she could probably never go back for now, since the police doubtlessly had realized she was gone and thought she'd killed Tyler, there would be an APB out for her soon enough and they would never catch her, of course, but she couldn't go back anyway and it wasn't like she'd packed like she used to, she was so lost in grief all she had were a few of her favorite outfits, a pair of shoes and an envelope filled with photos, and a few other things…

But there she was on the Salvatores' couch with her two childhood best friends, surrounded by their warmth and slowly filling in the blanks in all those years they hadn't spent apart, exactly, but not together either, and she couldn't imagine being back in her old empty cold, ghost-ridden house, not for all the money in the world. She burrowed closer to Bonnie.

"I'll miss you," she said, trying to make her voice light.

Guilt flashed on Bonnie's face. "I can probably—" she started, but Caroline interrupted, "That's not what I mean, I'm not saying this so that you'll stay, it's just… I will. And I did. I didn't realize how much."

Elena was making her earnest face, and Bonnie, serious Bonnie, looked like she was two seconds away from making a crack about Caroline being emotional just so that it would relieve the tension, but in the end she just knocked Caroline's hip through the covers and said softly, "Me too."

"Well, no-one can stay in Mystic Falls forever," Caroline said when the air started getting too thick, and immediately felt bad for it when she realized that was what Elena had been doing, more or less, when she didn't get it into her head to compel her way into a few semesters at college now and then.

Elena registered her discomfort and didn't say anything, but didn't seem that bothered either. It was true, after all.

The rest of the night passed without further heaviness, though there were moments of startling honesty when they told each other all the things they hadn't realized they were keeping inside, waiting for a best friend to hear. As much as they'd tried, two-week vacations here and there weren't the same, and seeing your friends in new surroundings wasn't always conducive to confessions. Whereas this, the comfortable environment of the house where so much had happened, so many changes and plot twists and transformations, felt —deceivingly, maybe, Caroline could remember quite a few disasters happening there— safe, cosy, the old cherry wood loaded with secrets.

They toed off their shoes and got —not drunk, not again, a hangover two nights in a row was fun for exactly no one, vampire or not— but pleasantly buzzed, enough to set Tyler's death and Caroline's voracious need for revenge, her thirst for an explanation, at the back of their mind. Bonnie fell asleep before Elena and Caroline and they watched her sleep for a while, her chest rising slightly with her steady breathing. Caroline thought, quick as lightning, that killing her would be terrifyingly easy, and when she turned to see if Elena was having the same thought —it had happened more than once; no matter how different they were, they'd been together so much since childhood that it was as though the fabrics of their beings had become interwoven in places— she caught Elena looking at her, her eyebrows drawn.

"What's going on?" she whispered.

Elena shook her head. "Nothing. It's just… what are you going to do? After Bonnie leaves?" Caroline opened her mouth, but Elena continued, "After you're done here, and you have everything you want?"

Caroline reached for one of Bonnie's stray locks, moving it out of her forehead. She had always been the most beautiful out of the three of them, unnoticed except for a few passing, ambiguous men, Kol Mikaelson, Jeremy Gilbert. Why was that?

"You know what I'm going to do." When she saw Elena's brows furrow further she sighed, "I'm not like you. I can't just turn the other cheek. Tyler was my _husband_ , and—" she thought about telling Elena, then decided against it, "the least I can do is find out who killed him and tear their head off."

There was a silence, then, "I'm not as gentle as you think," Elena said, surprising her.

She thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. "Maybe you're not. So you understand. I can't do nothing. Besides," she said, without really thinking, "I have forever. It's not like I'm going to waste my life on this."

"Tyler just died. I think we just realized how short forever really is." It was an odd thing to hear coming out of Elena's mouth, Elena who had been so adamant in staying human and who, once she had settled into her vampire boots, hadn't said much about it anymore but hadn't really seemed satisfied with her new form either. Maybe she wouldn't mind dying. Maybe getting that cure years ago and forcing it into Katherine's mouth out of her stupid nobleness of spirit or whatever had crushed her. Go figure. With Elena it seemed like everything was black and white but once you dug a little you realized it was never that simple.

"I'm going to be—" _careful_ , she was going to say, but as soon as she opened her mouth she realized how absurd it was. Tyler had been careful. Tyler had been nothing but careful, in fact, had kept as low a profile as he possibly could; and then some supernatural psycho had decided to cut a heart-shaped hole in his chest.

Elena gave her a Look, like, _see?_ , and Caroline couldn't help rolling her eyes at her, but it felt good, too, getting into a stupid argument over which suicide mission was the most suicidal.

"We can talk about it tomorrow," she said. She wasn't going to change her mind, but she didn't feel like getting into it now. She was tired and besides, they might wake Bonnie up. She considered suggesting to Elena that they go up to the room, but that feeling of unity was like a loose-knit sweater; she was afraid it would unravel.

Elena nodded. She slipped her hand in Caroline's and for a moment Caroline was surprised. It had been a long time since someone had held her hand and it was such a stupid, mundane thing, she felt like laughing. She didn't, but a giggle escaped her lips.

"What is it?" Elena asked sleepily, her face turned against the arm of the couch.

"Nothing," Caroline whispered. "Sweet dreams." The words brought back with them a wave of panic: sleeping meant dreaming and there would be no dreams, she knew, because the image burned at the back of her mind was Tyler's unnaturally pale face, the zip of the bodybag closing over it, his empty chest where that heart used to beat. He'd told her once about that time Klaus had reached inside his ribcage and gripped his heart for long, painstaking seconds; how it had felt, the imprint of his fingers burning against the thumping veins, cold seizing him and that incredible, unimaginable _pain_ , paralyzing him. Caroline hoped his death had been quick, instead of that protracted hell, but—

"I'll come with you," Elena's voice piped up suddenly in the darkness, jolting Caroline out of her nightmarish doze and into a strange world of sweetness, "If you go. I'll come with you," and Caroline found herself nodding to an invisible point facing her, where she imagined Elena was lying, her eyes half-open, waiting.

Sleeping felt strange: it was like floating between two oscillating worlds, one of infinite pain and one of mellow softness, both just outside her reach —not good, but better.

In the morning Caroline assisted, half-awake, while Bonnie puttered around with her suitcase and promised she'd call, twisting her dress over her shoulders and disappearing through the door again. In her in-between state Caroline found herself wondering if she wasn't a ghost still, when the traces of her presence were so few and unobtrusive. She forgot to ask about it when Elena's arm curled around her middle and dragged her back into the couch, though. There was a vague thought to ask her to go back to the actual bed, so they could get actual rest instead of bruises and knotted muscles, but Elena emanated warmth as though she weren't biologically dead. Caroline's head dropped in her lap and she succumbed to more vaguely unpleasant dreams.

They woke up at noon, feeling somewhat sore with Bonnie's absence and the fact that it meant that they really had to start looking now, which made Tyler's death that much more real. Caroline let the realization settle inside her for the hundredth time, and though it wasn't in any way easier than the first she kept going, stretched and put on a loose T-shirt, leant on the bar in Stefan's kitchen and watched Elena make eggs like she belonged there, which Caroline supposed she did. She'd been all but living here for years after all, and after burning her house down…

"Do you live here full-time?" she asked, half out of interest and half to prevent the possibility of the conversation straying into dangerous waters before she'd had coffee.

Elena flipped a piece of bacon in the pan where it fell with a greasy sizzle. "Kind of. I still have our old dorm at college, for whenever I go back, and I always find people to put me up when I travel, so…" She shrugged, like the Elena Gilbert power of making anyone love her was no big deal. Or maybe she meant compulsion, Caroline couldn't tell.

Without warning, Caroline's mind wandered back to Elena's —the Gilberts', but for her it would always be Elena's, from the first time she had been admitted into its sanctuary, into the warm embrace of Elena's deceivingly elitist friendship— old room. She remembered everything in almost excruciating detail, though why this had stuck but not more recent, vital memories, she couldn't tell: the ratty stuffed bear on the shelf, the bouquet of sparkly pens, the nice clean bedspread… It wasn't much, or original, but it had been hers, undeniably so. It was strange to think of Elena being the one lighting the match to burn it all to ashes.

"It wasn't really me," Elena said, apparently following the same train of thoughts.

Caroline hmed in accordance. Flipping the switch —strange name, but it was a strange ritual, and Caroline had never done it once in all these years, though now… "Don't you miss it?" she asked before she could think.

But Elena didn't wince. She shoveled an egg and a few pieces of bacon on a plate she dug out of the cupboard, sprinkled some salt and pepper on them and handed them to Caroline. Caroline breathed the delicious smell in with relish. The greasier the better for the hangover, was the universal rule.

"Not really," said Elena. "Like —of course I miss my things, or I used to, at the beginning, but it's been years, you know? And getting an apartment, I wouldn't even be there that often, usually I just…" She let her sentence trail off, not wanting to explain or maybe not knowing how to sum up her daily wanderings, "anyway, I have my things here. I do alright."

Caroline blinked. Elena had never been particularly high-strung, even before she'd been turned, but there had always been a neatness about her, something clear-cut that Caroline had trouble associating with the looseness and freedom of the Elena at the head of the table, resting her hip against the counter and closing her eyes when her lips touched her coffee. But it wasn't that surprising when you thought about it —people changed. Caroline had changed too, more than she'd thought she would.

"You want to see Stefan's books right now, or…?" Elena asked, still making googly eyes at her coffee.

The aching returned in Caroline's chest. She desperately wanted to ask Elena if she meant what she'd said the night before, about going with her, but the question as much as the answer were too fraught and too complicated for noon on a Tuesday morning.

"Sure. I'll just take a shower first, okay? I feel gross."

Elena gave her a tiny smile and nodded. "Yeah. You know where it is; I'll go grab you a towel."

Alone in the kitchen as she finished her plate, Caroline wondered absent-mindedly what shower she'd use. Maybe it really _was_ Elena's house —it did say so on the deed— but it still felt weird taking a shower somewhere where Stefan had probably been not too long ago, where he and Elena, and in the other room probably Damon and Elena, not to mention Damon and countless tramps… Caroline repressed her shudder. Not to mention both brothers' tendency for pretending not to know what doors were for and pulling the Batman shtick all over the place, she thought.

On the other hand she really did feel gross, like there was a film of travel grit and dried tears all over the skin, and she was going to need all the strength she had for trying to find out what had happened to Tyler, Elena or no Elena. When she got upstairs she headed decidedly for Stefan's room, deciding that it wasn't that weird, since they'd already slept in his bed. Besides, if he walked in on her naked and soapy they would probably get over the awkwardness within the next century. Maybe.

The hot water on her shoulders felt almost as good as the whisky two nights before, and Caroline titled her head back and let her thoughts wander. Unexpectedly enough, it felt good to be back in Mystic Falls. For once Elena was relatively drama-less (though that probably wouldn't last) and if Caroline had been alone with her grief in her and Tyler's house there was a big chance she might have broken apart. But she was going to have to go see her mother, and as much as she ached to collapse in her arms and cry her weight in tears there was also dread pooling at the base of her stomach, a certainty that telling her was going to make it _true_ , terrifyingly finite. And what would she do, without Tyler? Who was she, even? She'd gone from being her mother's daughter, little Caroline Forbes, Elena's best friend, Matt's then Tyler's girlfriend and of course Klaus's bit-on-the-side crush; from being all that, and breathing in the spaces in between, when no one was looking, from trying to scrub the trace of Damon's possessive hands curled around her forearms when really his possessiveness wasn't meant for her, when she was just an occasional snack, a place-filler for as many of those people as she could remember… from being all that, she had gone on to become Mrs Tyler Lockwood, swallowed up in his name, in him, the golden tinge of his skin and their house and his wolf and the gauzy cloud of her wedding dress. Who was she going to be, now that she had no one to belong to?

She itched to cry, and while there was no one looking she let herself let go of a few tears, feeling them mix on her cheeks with the water and swirl down the drain. Her knees wanted to buckle but she didn't let them. She scrubbed as much sadness and uncertainty out of her skin as she could before going back downstairs, where Elena had arranged a dusty, heavy-looking book and two glasses of —what was that smell— O-neg on the living-room table. Caroline squeezed the towel tighter around her chest, reached for one of the glasses and drained it, feeling her cheeks heat up with the contented blush of new blood. Elena watched her with a smile on her face.

"Thanks, I needed that," Caroline said when she put the glass down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Normally she had more manners than that, but what the hell, she was heartbroken.

She slumped on the couch, grimacing at the book. "What is that? It looks completely unreadable."

Elena nodded with a small grimace of her own. "Yeah. I looked again at your photos, it's a—" she peered inside the book, at the title page, "Dictionary of Ancient and Lost Languages."

"Ugh, Stefan is such a nerd."

"You're telling me," Elena said with a tiny giggle.

"Well, did you find anything?"

Elena shook her head no. "I just started."

Caroline complained for a few more minutes, trying to ignore the buzzing ache of grief, already almost familiar, settling in her side. Comfortably wedged between Elena and the arm of the couch, she abandoned all plans of getting dressed and lay her head against a throw pillow, staining it with her wet hair.

"Oops," she said half-heartedly, not making any move to sit up.

Elena laughed, showing off her disgustingly white teeth.

"It's fine," Elena said about the pillow, "don't worry about it. They have a housekeeper; she comes by every Thursday."

Caroline raised an eyebrow, instantly mentally cataloguing the risks: that the housekeeper would stumble on the freezer, or a naked Katherine in the staircase, or a naked anyone, really, or an orgy of dead, bloody people in the living-room, or maybe just a boring old corpse, since people seemed to enjoy declaring how pissed off they were by dropping those off on Stefan's rugs. Then again, Damon and Stefan _were_ two-hundred-year-old bachelors, she didn't know why she was surprised.

They perused the book in silence, until it surfaced that the words under the symbols were in Quechua; at which point Caroline settled back into the couch, suddenly feeling inappropriate for tragedy in her towel, and said, "Fuck."

Elena raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"

"I know—" Caroline waved a hand. "Tyler was — he was working with this tribe in Peru, near Cuzco. That's probably where…" she made a gesture towards the book, to say, _something happened_.

"Or it's a false lead," Elena said. Caroline recognized her stubborn tone; she probably still thought Klaus was behind the whole thing, which wasn't likely but wasn't ridiculous, either.

She snorted. "You think Klaus planted a Incan knife on — not even on actually, in the _forest_ where Tyler was murdered? So we wouldn't think it was him, even though he's one of the most dangerous beings on this entire planet and we probably couldn't kill him even if we tried, which, oh, actually we have? Come on."

Elena nodded her head, as though to concede Caroline might have a point, but she still didn't look convinced.

There was a silence, then, "What was Tyler doing in Peru, anyway?"

Caroline bit her lip. Yeah —that was the part she hadn't really been looking forward to explaining. "We—" she scrubbed a hand over her face, "we were having some problems."

"You and Tyler?" Elena asked, disbelieving — then she realized and rushed to say, "I mean, I just, I always thought you were—" She waved a hand, _you know what I mean_.

Which —Caroline did, in a way, because it was true that Tyler and her had always been simple, wonderfully and reassuringly simple, and it was part of the reason why she'd married him, that when they were good they were great; but on the other hand there had also been a lot of fights, even back when they were in college, that time when he'd showed up at her dorm after months and dumped her and after he learned she'd slept with Klaus in the woods, he'd been frothing at the mouth, she'd thought he might— So it didn't really make sense for Elena to think that they were that perfect married couple, except maybe she had her own fairytales drawn up in her head that she had built up on her own… because it was easier, wasn't it, to pretend like everything was happy and blissful wherever you weren't?

In the end she just said, "Yeah. He wasn't there all the time, anyway, but you know, he didn't have a pack and he started doing this thing that—" _bitch_ , she started to say, but it felt stupid after so many years, "Hayley did before she got—" _knocked up by Klaus fucking Mikaelson, of all the stupid things to do_ , "helping packs all over. They needed him there, so…"

 _And he wanted to go as far away from me as he could, and maybe I pushed him, I'm not really sure—_ But Elena just nodded, didn't pry further. She probably would, later, casually, pretending not to be all that interested, because Elena thought that she deserved to bear all the ills of the world, that she was fucking Atlas or something, and she was kind of good at it too.

"That's where I have to go," Caroline said, all of a sudden.

"What?"

"Peru," Caroline said. "That's where I have to go, if I want to find out what happened to him."

Elena looked completely flabbergasted, like that wasn't a perfectly logical conclusion to get from everything that had happened. "I— what?"

Caroline clucked her tongue. "It makes sense, when you think about it. I can't read Quechua, and not to underestimate your abilities but I doubt you can either, and it's not like Tyler and I knew many Peruvian people apart from the pack. He probably met whoever killed him there. It's no use just staying here talking about it. They loved Tyler there; they'll help me. I'll find who did it. I have to go." She didn't say the last part, _so I can show them what I do to people who kill the ones I love_. Elena wasn't stupid — she'd understand. "

(She also felt, though she didn't say that either, that this was the only thing she had left, of all her possessions in the world: now that Tyler and her house and her heart were all broken, lost, all taken away from her in the space of a week, she was back to being nineteen-year-old Caroline Forbes with the newfound fangs and the ability to take a life quicker than you could blink. She felt like this time she was really turning into the corpse she had been all along, only kept warm by the wolf-furnace in her bed; so what was left besides her claws, her thirst for blood, the ache in her jaw?)

"If this about what you said last night, it's fine," Caroline said when Elena still didn't stop gaping at her. "You don't have to come."

Elena finally closed her mouth. She ruminated for a few seconds, and then said, "This is insane."

Caroline couldn't help a little laugh. "Tyler is dead," she countered —as far as she was concerned, there was nothing as insane as that, as impossible to believe. Tyler was dead, and the sun hadn't stopped shining, and everyone hadn't suddenly started wearing black, and the world was still turning —if she didn't do something about it soon it would be like nothing had happened at all.

(Because something had happened. Tyler was dead.)

Elena titled her head. The silence thickened until it became uncomfortable — and then Elena sighed, releasing all the tension in a simple sentence, when she said, "Of course I'll come."

Until that moment Caroline hadn't realized how much she wanted her to, how much she'd already stacked on that promise since the night before: that she wouldn't be alone on the road with nothing but her thoughts for company, that she wouldn't be the only one to try and avenge Tyler as though he had no friends and no one who cared about him; that she would be the one to wrap her hands around Tyler's murderer's throat and Elena would be beside her when she did.

She exhaled, grinned. "I thought it was insane?"

Elena shrugged. "It is. But you're my friend. You didn't think I was going to ditch you in your time of need, did you?" And she furrowed her eyebrows, as though she was really asking, noble, loyal Elena with her heart that could sometimes house the entire world, or at least that's what she thought.

Caroline didn't answer; she tipped to the side and wrapped her arms around Elena, fingers buried into the hair at the back of her neck, pressing in to make her understand that she didn't think that, she didn't. To make her see how relieved she was. Elena smiled against her shoulder. For some reason, Caroline felt like it was purging some of her pain out of her skin, like she'd been stung by a bee and Elena was sucking the poison out.

"Peru," Elena huffed when she pulled away.

"Stefan's not going to come back while we're gone, is he?"

Elena's face hardened a fraction. "If he does, it's really not my problem."

 _Or Damon?_ Caroline thought about asking, because it was hard to keep track of which brother Elena was wrapped up in at any point; but she decided against it. Besides, if it was really Damon she was doing Elena a favor by taking her away. And it was for a good cause.

They went up to Stefan's library to dig up some more books about Incas and peruse travel books before leaving. Caroline had a small epiphany as the sun started to set, a ripple that started in her shoulder and spread all the way to her feet, now that the adrenaline of discovery was completely out of her system: she really _was_ insane, wasn't she? She couldn't just — she couldn't just set off to Peru and try her chance at finding who'd stuck their hand in Tyler's chest and torn his heart out, it was bound to be dangerous, and she didn't even know where the pack lived exactly, they moved around all the time, how were they going to find them? But she looked over at Elena, her nose stuck in a dusty tome, looking for all the world like she was completely on board with Caroline's crazy plan, and she thought, okay. Maybe I can do this. Rage swirled in her stomach, cheering her on.

It was at the end of the night, when their eyes were hurting from the dust and the information and there were ball glasses and a half-empty bottle of shiraz propped up on Stefan's desk, that Elena looked up and said, "I've got something."

Caroline's heart started pounding painfully in her chest. "What?"

"It's—" Elena slid the book over, "it's nothing crucial, just about the knife. If this is right it's a _tumi_ , an Ican ceremonial knife. Um, they used to kill llamas with it?" Caroline couldn't help a giggle, and Elena quirked a smile at her. "I know, right? Anyway, the picture fits, right?"

Caroline nodded. "Guess that makes Peru a good idea."

"Yeah," Elena frowned, "or it makes Tyler's murder a really nice fake from someone with access to ancient weapons. Wonder who that could be."

"Elena…"

"Caroline," Elena said. "I know I said I'd go with you, and I will. I just have one condition."

Caroline arched an eyebrow, biting her tongue not to say it was a little late for conditions.

"I know you don't think it's worth pursuing, but I do. It's just a little detour before we leave, it'll take, what, two days at most? I just want to check on a hunch."

Caroline knew what was coming, but she asked anyway, "What hunch?"

Elena held her gaze stubbornly. "New Orleans isn't that far," she said with finality.

Caroline thought about arguing, but knew it was useless — when Elena got an idea in her head you'd better either have some strong arguments and endless force of will or a few hundred years to waste. Denying her would only guarantee that she'd find a more dangerous way to find out what she wanted to know. (And, she added to quiet the tiny voice at the back of her mind, that wedding indiscretion wasn't even in the top five of her secrets. Ten, maybe. Time to sort of out her priorities.)

"Sure, why not," she said, a little petulantly. "I've always wanted to visit the French Quarter, anyway."

—

It didn't even look that out of place on top of her neatly-folded pile of clothes, Caroline thought.

She picked up the knife, rolling it between her fingers. The half-moon blade was made of smooth metal —gold or copper, Caroline couldn't tell— but there wasn't a square inch of the ornate handle that wasn't covered in symbols. They'd tried to decipher them with the help of Stefan's books, but either it was complete gibberish or they were missing something —a key, Elena had said, if it was a code, and if not maybe it was an older dialect that even Stefan's pretentious dictionaries had never heard of. The fat placid face of the Sun-God, Inti, seemed to mock her, staring right ahead with its gem-studded eyes. The knife felt heavy in the palm of her hand, and she hadn't dared cleaning the blood off it, either, just wrapped it in one of her scarves —Hermes, that knife was getting the first-class treatment—, stuck it at her waist and slid back out the window of the Montpelier Police Department.

Having it in her bag made her slightly uneasy, though. Every time her eyes fell on it the memory of Tyler, strangely unmoving, his chest slashed open and carved into, surfaced back and Caroline felt the need to retch. She didn't know why she hadn't shown it to Elena either, she just… hadn't. It wasn't she didn't trust her, not really. But she had pictures, what was the real thing going to help? At least this one thing was hers, this one facet of Tyler's death that only she had access to, the metal warm in her hands. She felt a deep superstition, a sort of instinct broiling inside her — Tyler believed in those things and she hadn't listened to him once. Now…

"Care?"

She slipped the knife back in the scarf and between two pairs of jeans, her hands trembling a little with adrenaline.

"Yeah?" she called back.

"You ready?"

"Almost."

She looked out the window. The sun was harsh the way it rarely was in Mystic Falls, like it knew what they were up to and wanted to avoid giving them the opportunity to sit on their asses, lazy and afraid. Damon and Stefan weren't back. Caroline felt slightly bad to take Elena away from them —that old, absurd idea that she belonged to the two of them and that they were powerless without her, though that last part wasn't far from the truth— but hell, her emergency was way more important. They'd have all the time they wanted to whine about True Love when Elena came back, and in the meantime their bro bonding could take a few weeks' extension, seeing the issues there. And besides, they'd left a note.

When she emerged in the corridor, Elena was on the phone with Bonnie, whispering for some reason. "I know, I know — look —well, I wasn't going to— Bonnie, listen—"

"Everything okay?" Caroline asked, a little too loud and too cheerily.

Elena jumped. She nodded at the phone dumbly. "Bonnie," she mouthed.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "I could've guessed. Freak vampire hearing, remember?"

Elena gave her a contrite smile and said into the phone, "Bon, I have to go. Talk to you later." She didn't wait for an answer before she hung up.

They stood face to face in the corridor for a handful of seconds; Caroline reflected idly that it was like a Western, like they were going to draw their weapons, see who could shoot straight and who would only catch the other's shadow. "What did she want?"

Elena bit her lips. "She's just worried."

"Worried? About what?"

Elena gave her a look and it occurred to her, eventually: about her. She was worried about her, weak, senseless Caroline Forbes gone mad with grief. Yeah, it figured. She didn't resent Bonnie for it, either —but she wasn't crazy. It made sense, it all made sense in her head.

"Are you?"

Elena moved back a fraction so that her face was half-hidden in the early-afternoon shadows. "Of course I'm worried about you, Care. Your husband just died."

"You know what I mean."

Elena sighed. "I said I'd come with you, didn't I?" she said, like Caroline would have to be satisfied with that.

Outside the gravel crunched under their shoes and Caroline took a second to feel glad she'd chosen the right ones, with thick heels and hard soles, especially if they were going to be traipsing through the Amazon jungle or something. She snuck a glance at Elena, but she didn't seem about to suddenly drop her bag and run back into the house.

Caroline waited until they were already halfway out of Mystic Falls before she said, "We have to stop at my mom's."

Elena swore under her breath, taking a sharp turn. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? I could've—" She stopped when she took a look at Caroline, "Care — you mean, you didn't go before? She doesn't know?"

Caroline kept her eyes resolutely on the road. "She will soon enough."

"Why—" Elena started, then sighed. She was a parent's dream, Caroline thought bitterly, a remnant from her adolescent sourness. But she didn't say, _I was afraid I was going to crumble down_ or _I thought I might die from the pain_ or even _Aren't you happy I came to you first?_ They all felt a little too truthful; it was enough that Caroline was probably going to spill a few secrets on their little roadtrip, no need to start so soon.

The drive to Caroline's mother's was blessedly silent. Caroline fiddled with the radio of Elena's ridiculous SUV —"It's perfect for investigating," she'd declared, hands on her hips, and she really was going to be better at this than Caroline, wasn't she? Of course she was— until she resigned herself to the fact that there was nothing good on, and then she pressed her cheek against the window and watched the landscapes of her childhood pass her by. The high school, where she —where they both— had pranced around with pompoms and too-high ponytails; the road leading to that bridge where so many cars had gone off-track and ended up in the shallow river; the park where Matt had kissed her one afternoon, dipping quickly to get her on the lips, not really kind and surprisingly unshy, and hadn't apologized for it; the car park where she'd seen Damon for the first time, twirling his keys on his fingers and smirking his stupid, hateful smirk; the Lockwood estate, where on the day of the Miss Mystic Falls election Klaus had said —where Tyler's mother had had her head pushed under the water and drowned; the decaying silhouette of the Originals' mansion, and of course the ash-black ground where the Gilbert house had stood for so long, even though Caroline could see they were finally building something new over the charred ground, a house, not exactly uglier than the old one, but different… When they passed it she couldn't help but dart a glance at Elena, just to check —but she kept driving, undisturbed. (Remember, she's changed, too. What was it she'd said? _I do alright,_ and not in her martyr, I-keep-going, I-survive tone, like everything was genuinely okay, calm, quiet.)

The urge to get away from all those memories —conflicting, and so many of them included Tyler, Tyler in all his permutations, from smug to vulnerable to heartbroken to radiantly, brilliantly happy— gripped her, and she couldn't help but fold in her seat. The car slowed down to a halt; when Caroline looked out the window they were in front of her mother's house. She breathed in shakily.

"Show time," she said, not moving.

Elena only nodded. "You want me to come with you?"

Caroline shook her head no, even though what she really wanted was to grab Elena's hand and pull her out of the car with her, keep her by her side through the whole thing like a shield. "I should probably do this alone," she said. It was Elena who'd gotten this into all their heads, too, wasn't it? That they had to be heroes all the time. Well, fuck her.

 _Come with me,_ she swallowed. Instead she said, "Okay. I'm going."

Elena gave her a compassionate look. "I'm sorry," she said softly, and it echoed around the inside of the car, floating like some sort of portable curse, because Caroline knew what it meant, and it meant that Tyler was dead.

She gave back her own twisted, it'll-be-fine smile. She was going to have to do this for the rest of her life —she couldn't imagine any of this grief thawing down, or any of the searing guilt either.

Before she could think about it she pushed the car door open and walked across the driveway, curled her hand into a fist and knocked at the door. She really could've got in, she still had the key somewhere in her purse, but this felt better, more cautious. She didn't know what she'd do if her mother wasn't there and she had to go to her room and see her collection of cheery, colored little dresses, and that bracelet, the one she'd never thrown away even though she should've.

There were footsteps. Caroline took a breath. The door opened.

Her mother frowned. "Caroline? What are you doing here, honey?"

Caroline couldn't help but let her face crumple, and her mother took a step forward, rubbing her arm, brows furrowed. "What's going on? Did something happen? Where's Tyler?"

For how long, Caroline wondered through the stomach-cramping pain, fighting not to fold forward into her mother's arms, were people going to ask her where Tyler was? But they were right —because that was what marriage meant, wasn't it, that you were the same entity, the same person. It wasn't meant to happen like this, with one of them dying before they could even get grey hairs (but that would never have happened either, would it?); something as unnatural as losing a child.

"He's not coming," she managed. Elena was looking from her window, pretending to do something on her phone, and suddenly Caroline remembered how she'd been after her parents had died: she'd only cried once, the day of the funeral; the rest of the time she'd been determined and blank-faced, a tiny Jesus in flats with that little bow on the side of her headband, her arm curled protectively around Jeremy. When it came down to it Caroline was more like Jenna, a second-rate player, the one who just couldn't stop sobbing when they leveled the coffin into the ground.

Her mother led her into the house, sat her down on the couch and brought her a cup of tea, even though Caroline had never really been a tea person. They sat there face to face for a few seconds, Caroline searching for the words that would make all this seem a little less absurd. The smell of lemon and honey clogged her nostrils, unpleasantly heady. Her mother was wringing her hands; did she even notice?

"Something happened," Caroline said eventually. Tears started leaking out of her eyes and she didn't try to stop them, just swiped them angrily with the back of her hands. "We… Tyler was attacked in the forest behind our house a few days ago."

Her mother's mouth formed a small o. "Is he okay?"

"No," Caroline said. "He's not okay. He's dead."

Her mother set down her mug without spilling anything and before Caroline could think she was being engulfed in an embrace. She hugged back, taking care to keep the floodgates closed; if she let go of her precious numbness now, who was to say what would keep her together?

"I'm so sorry," her mother said in her hair. "Honey, I'm so sorry," and the worst of it was probably that Caroline could tell she wasn't really surprised, that she'd been waiting all along for the consequences of their condition, vampires and werewolves running amok in a disordered world. What about eternal life? Caroline felt like yelling. What about freedom from death? Wasn't that the bargain?

But she just clung onto her mother's arm, breathed in her familiar scent, building up strength. Eventually her mother pulled back. Her brows were still furrowed. "What about you? Are you in any danger? Do you —was it supernatural?"

"I don't know. I'm not in danger, I don't think, it looks like… I'm still trying to find out what happened."

"You shouldn't—" her mother started, and she was probably right, but—

Caroline ducked her head. "I know, but if not me who will? It's not like I can call the police and tell them that my husband was a werewolf, is it?"

It would be hard for anyone, getting used to this world of legends coming to life, governed by its own petty rules, an eye for an eye. One day your daughter was a cheerleader with a pointy grin and straight As and the next a good meal meant a glass of B positive —it wasn't exactly an easy transition.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," she said.

Caroline nodded, instilling into it more certainty than she felt. "I wont. I'll be fine, mom. I'll just…" She swallowed. "I'm going to be away for a while. Me and Elena."

"What about the funeral? And your house?"

Like ripping a band-aid. "The police probably think I did it by now." Her mother's eyes widened. "I know, but it's not— I wasn't supposed to leave the state and I needed to see Elena, I couldn't stay…" Tears prickled her eyes. "I couldn't stay there, you know? It'll be fine, it's just that I can't go back there now and they won't release the body, since Tyler has no family left… They'll probably—" She squeezed her eyes shut. Truth was, she hadn't really given thought to what, exactly, they would do with the body, and now it was making bile rise in her throat. Would they, what, keep it in the morgue indefinitely? Use it for science? Incinerate it? She should've followed her instincts that first day, taken the body with her.

"They might call you, that's all," she said eventually. "Ask you where I am. I don't want to put you in trouble, you know that, it's just—"

"Of course," her mother said. "Is it — can I do anything?"

 _Can you bring him back?_ burned Caroline's lips; for a second she wished Bonnie was still there so she could have begged for a spell, black magic, anything, to return Tyler to her. (And she remembered, at the back of her mind where that memory was —and would always be— lodged, that day in the forest in front of the Originals' manor, killing the first witch and watching them all fall one after the other, like dominoes…)

"Just tell them you don't know anything." She took a gulp of tea even though she didn't really want it, to stall for time. "I'm going to take care of it, and then—" And then she didn't want to think about it, what she was going to do, drained of life and energy and purpose and the need for revenge. "I'll call you when I'm on the road."

Her mother hesitated, then, "Where are you going?"

"Peru." Her mother's eyes widened again. "I know it sounds crazy, but there was a knife near Tyler's body with Quechua symbols on the handle and Tyler was working with this tribe in Peru, I don't know if you remember?" Her mother gave a faint, sad nod. "I think something happened there. I just want to know… I just want to know." She didn't say the rest, the list of horrible and bloody punishments she was planning for Tyler's murderer. No mother needed to hear that.

"Alright," her mother said softly. "Be careful."

Caroline nodded. Suddenly she felt heavy, like her entire skeleton was made of lead. Maybe she could just abandon this entire stupid plan and hide in her childhood bed until all the sadness melted away, until all the memories of Tyler were cleaned out of her brain, incapable to rear up and pierce through her heart. Her mother wouldn't say anything, she'd understand, and—

"I'll miss him," her mother said, staring in front of her. She'd liked Tyler —Caroline remembered watching them dance the day of the wedding, while Stefan was twirling her around, everything shining, the garden strung with Chinese lights, the smell sweet and pregnant and summery. They were talking and there was a fond, soft look on her mother's usually stern face, as though this was something she was proud to have done well, to have seen happen, one notch on the normality belt for Caroline Forbes —well, Lockwood now.

"Yeah," Caroline said. All of a sudden she couldn't wait to get out of there. "Me too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **further notes:** i know, i won't leave you alone. here (at inkaspirit dot dk/?vm=20526) is a translation of the chapter title, and here (at artic dot edu/aic/collections/artwork/18757?search_no=1 &index=7) is an example of what a tumi knife looks like.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to preface this by saying that yes, Hayley is in this chapter. I'm adapting freely from TO canon, as in, I watched up to episode 12 and then got bored, so this is all the canon this sticks to. Let's call it creative retelling.
> 
> I know what's in this chapter regarding what happened in New Orleans isn't very clear, but it'll all be better explained in the second part.

"Drive," Caroline said when she finally made it back to the car, heavy with promises not to put herself in danger and to call at least once a week, before Elena had the time to ask her anything. 

For once Elena did what she was asked and they were out of Mystic Falls soon enough, driving on the straight black road that led out of Virginia and on to… well, New Orleans, probably. Caroline still thought it was stupid, since Klaus probably didn't have anything to do with this whole thing, and if he didn't she wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing him. The thing was —the thing was that her body seemed to have a certain code for reacting when he was near, no matter how long they hadn't seen each other for or how much she convinced herself she hated him; Caroline tried not to think about it as magnets, endlessly pulling towards each other. She'd done well during all this time, kept away, been a good girl, and now the thought of tipping helplessly towards him as soon as she saw him made her sick to her stomach. 

(Not to mention there was a 90% chance Klaus was going to be as infuriatingly smug as he always was, and he would let something slip, and Elena would ask questions and then what would she say? She'd seen that disappointed look on Elena's face enough to last her three lifetimes.)

They drove for ten hours straight, Elena refusing to let Caroline take over, as fierce in protecting her loved ones as she had always been. After a while Caroline stopped protesting and drifted into a fitful sleep, waking up every so often from nightmares so real she felt her fangs pushing out in a futile effort to defend her. They didn't talk a lot, but neither of them really minded —every possible subject of conversation seemed to take a backseat to what had happened, the omnipresent reality of Tyler in a bodybag in some unfriendly morgue, really dead this time. Nevertheless, it was good to see Elena again, jut to _be_ with her, sitting next to her and drinking in her presence. They'd been together twenty-four seven for most of their childhood and adolescence, and the separation had been brutal. For a while Caroline wasn't really sure how to function without her, her sensible advice, her terrible taste in boys, her annoying righteousness, her trail of ghosts. She'd wondered why they couldn't just take a plane, but now it made sense —getting re-acquainted with each other, letting the dry wind coming in from the open windows lick their wounds.

Besides, if they'd taken a plane Elena couldn't have unearthed a thermos from under her seat, and they couldn't have drunk warm blood as they started talking again, in increments, about small, menial things, the things they hadn't gotten around to doing yet, how strange —and welcome— it was that Katherine hadn't shown her face in Mystic Falls in over three years now… Caroline kind of wished Bonnie were there so this was really the cross-country roadtrip they'd dreamed of for the summer after graduation and never gotten to go on because, well, Bonnie was dead, even though they didn't know it at the time. It would've made it easier to forget their real purpose, too, always lurking at the back of her mind.

When Elena started dozing and squirming on her seat they stopped at a reststop where Elena bought a coffee and a Mars bar, got chocolate all over her mouth and didn't clue in until Caroline pointed it out two hundred miles later. Caroline almost choked with laughter, frantically digging a tissue out of her handbag with one hand, and then Elena joined in, sunny and brilliant and everything that had made Caroline's heart constrict painfully before. I'm going to tell her, she thought, ready to spill all her secrets, going to dig the knife out of her bag; but something held her arm back at the last moment. Not yet. She shook the guilt; the rest of the trip went well, Elena curled in the passenger seat and visibly exhausted but light-hearted, talking about things like clubs she'd been at in Virginia that hadn't been there when they were kids and that trip to Greece Caroline had never heard about. Elena laughed some more, told her to imagine Stefan in a speedo. Caroline made a face, and soon they were just outside the city, Caroline angling into a wide street she felt like she recognized. They fell silent as if by a tacit accord.

New Orleans was bathed in a moonless night, draped over in deep-blue velvet, and it felt oddly like a graveyard. As soon as they reached the street curling into the city center, Caroline felt that something was wrong: this wasn't a city made to be visited in silence, when everything was dead and cold and there were no raucous festivals or street music. When Klaus had talked about New Orleans he'd made it seem like something you would go blind from looking at because it was so hot, so intense, so _full_ , but this wasn't it —this was a whale's cemetery, where the only thing still singing are decaying bones. The thought of Klaus made Caroline bite her lip guiltily, and she tried not to think about seeing him on his territory, where he was king; where she couldn't pretend she'd never once been tempted to follow him. She moved her ring around her finger; thought about Tyler's in her bag, and couldn't she put it on, too, would that be enough protection? 

"Care, you okay?"

Caroline nodded wordlessly. Elena had told her she knew —had known for a while— where the Originals' sprawling mansion of choice was this time. Apparently Klaus had had to battle over his old quarters from when he'd created the town with his —disciple?— and had kept two places, an old slave plantation on the edge of town and his dwellings in the middle of the city, when he'd gotten them back. 

Caroline looked out the window, falling back in the familiar pattern of trying to pick out who was a creature and who wasn't. It wasn't easy —apparently there were a lot of them here, witches and vampires; no werewolves, though, they were banished from the city— but everyone looked a little odd, a little strange, like they might smile at you and reveal fangs dripping with blood, hands stained with chalk from drawing symbols on the ground. Caroline resisted the urge to hug her knees to her chest. She wasn't twelve anymore, and besides, Klaus wasn't that scary. 

Elena said, hesitant, "I can go alone, if you want. It won't take long. I'll just ask him and—"

Caroline cut her off with an uncheery laugh. "From experience, I think it's better if I go. I don't remember the Originals being super fond of you, except maybe Elijah." Though it was hard to tell with Elijah, who was noble and stiff and terrifying, like all of them, except he hid his violence under a veneer of calm and politeness; not that he couldn't make your skull turn to dust with one look. But for a while he'd seemed to have a particular fondness for Elena, not the same Klaus had for Caroline —could that even be called fondness? No, probably not— but something all the same, maybe because he saw Katherine's traits on her face. Still. In Caroline's experience, monsters in love were never good news.

Elena drove them to the house in the middle of the city first. There was no badly-disguised vampire with a daylight ring guarding the door, Caroline noticed when she left the car, surprised. She said as much, but Elena just shrugged. Caroline recognized the set of her jaw: let's get this over with. She'd never been crazy about the Originals. They'd killed Jenna, hadn't they? And so many others, it was hard to keep track, harder even after all these years… The courtyard was empty. There was no one leaning on the ramp upstairs, no grinning Klaus, no Rebekah pouting and manipulative by a column, no underlings either. The whole place felt uninhabited, like no one had lived there for a long time and no one dared move in either, the wood still bearing a curse from the last occupants. Caroline felt something twist in her stomach. 

"I'm not feeling this," she said. 

"Let's just go inside," Elena said stubbornly. "They're probably hiding. Come on, let's get this over with."

 _Why would they hide from us?_ Caroline didn't ask, and she didn't bitch either about the fact that Elena seemed so eager to be done with this visit when she was the one who'd insisted they come in the first place. 

None of the doors were locked. Inside all that remained was dust and a bunch of cobwebs; there was a dartboard and, etched on the dark wall, marks made by a knife that Caroline knew without even needing to look were kills. It took nothing, closing your eyes and inhaling, to imagine how the place might've looked, filled to bursting with daylight ring-less vampires; but they were gone.

"There's nothing there," she told Elena. 

Elena made a face like, _duh_. She twirled the car keys in her hand, looking slightly concerned. "Let's go to the plantation, see if we have more luck there."

Caroline nodded. She wasn't uncomfortable, not really, but it was hard to pretend like Klaus's presence wasn't in every single particle of air, in every smell and chair and stone, because not only had he lived there he'd _built_ this place, too, and it felt like it. Caroline squirmed a little and hoped Elena wouldn't notice. Yet another thing she didn't want to have to explain. 

The plantation was on the other side of town; when they parked in front of the mansion Caroline couldn't help but chuckle. It looked almost exactly like the manor in Mystic Falls, big and white and completely unsubtle. The fountain in front was a mocking eggshell color, and even though nothing gave sign of life —no open windows, a dead silence only occasionally broken by the insistent screech of cicadas— the place exuded an aura of haughty, threatening grandeur. Elena raised an eyebrow at her, and they laughed.

As they walked up to the door, though, it appeared pretty quickly that something was different. Unless the Originals had forgotten to pay their gardener and he'd decided to take revenge on, like, their whole backyard, it seemed unlikely that anyone actually lived there, or had in some time. Unruly weeds were winding around the edges of the stairs, vengeful; the blinds were drawn; all around the mansion nature had given into wild abandon, trees flowering baroquely, fruit rotting on the ground, venomous-looking flowers growing in bright obscene clumps. This time the door wasn't hard to force, but everything inside was covered in a film of ash. Caroline sighed. 

"Well. That's one thousand miles for nothing."

Elena made a face, not quite contrite. "I didn't — I thought they were still here. I should probably have checked."

 _No kidding,_ Caroline thought, but bit her tongue. She was just pissed because every day they spent chasing this stupid Klaus trail was one more day she didn't get to sink her fangs into the neck of the bastard who'd killed her husband. From what she'd heard the first time she'd asked around —but it was a while ago, Tyler was the jealous type and not exactly keen on Klaus, either— the Three Stooges were still there, happily terrorizing the city. She couldn't blame Elena for not wanting to check up on the guy who'd tried to kill them once a week until a few years ago, for wanting to forget and move on. 

Something moved in the dust. Caroline tugged Elena to her side and opened her mouth, letting her fangs drop. "What's going on?" Elena whispered frantically. 

"Didn't you hear?"

"Hear what?"

A noise again; this time something was definitely moving, shuffling its feet. Ghosts didn't move dust, and this wasn't human; didn't smell or sound like it.

"There's something there," Caroline whispered. 

Elena struggled out of her grip. She lent an ear, her eyes half-closed —the next second she was on the ground, breath knocked out of her lungs in a shocked _oof_. Before Caroline could blink something jumped out of the tentacular shadows, all claws out, a tall animalistic silhouette. There was a hiss. Caroline took a step forward, blindly, her heart hammering in her chest. She let the transformation complete; her blood ran hot. She leaped forward —next thing she knew the back of her head hit the wall with a sickening crack and she dropped to the floor, winded. In front of her the fight was a confused tangle of limbs, engulfed in the dusty darkness. Elena spit a mouthful of dark blood on the ground; the floating shape pinning her to the ground came into focus, suddenly touched by the light as they rolled in the dirt. A wolf.

Elena took advantage of the light that was blinding her adversary to rise on one knee and bare her fangs, openly threatening. The wolf reared facing her. Caroline tried to move, but something was holding her where she was, an invisible length of rope around her throat. She hissed; both Elena and the wolf —werewolf, clearly, if its eyes were anything to go by— ignored her, locked in their staring contest. Caroline rolled her eyes, trying to ignore the fear pounding in her ears.

There was something familiar about the wolf, actually, Caroline realized, in the triangular yellow of its pupils and the smooth grey fur; but she couldn't put her finger on it. For a second time seemed to screech to a halt, slowing to that silent standstill and it was who would jump the other first; but eventually the wolf tilted its head, disturbingly human-like, and sat. There was a horrible cracking sound, bones rearranging, flesh clearing under the fur —and suddenly in lieu of the wolf there was freaking Hayley, naked as the day she was born, looking half-bored, half-annoyed. The invisible rope released its grip on Caroline's throat; she staggered forward. Hayley turned to look her in the face, rubbing her jaw with the palm of her hand. 

"Got a cardigan to spare?"

—

Hayley was sitting on the stairs of the mansion smoking a cigarette she had magicked out of nowhere, how, Caroline didn't care enough to ask. She puffed her cheeks up with smoke and held it there for a while before finally releasing it in the air where it floated quietly like a funeral wreath. When there was nothing but ash between her fingers she crushed the stub next to her on the steps. Caroline took it as a sign that she was ready to start talking; they had kept silent until then, as if respectful of Hayley's singular brand of tragedy. 

"What are you doing here?" Hayley asked, wrapping the folds of Caroline's favorite jacket around her chest. The edge of the pink boxers she'd gotten from a plastic bag hidden under one of the planks in the mansion's living-room was peeking under the hem, jarring.

Elena gave her a pointed look. "We could ask you the same thing."

Hayley nodded absently. "But you didn't," she said with a shrug. She looked up at Caroline. "So?"

"We're searching for Klaus." As she said it she couldn't help but look down at Hayley's belly, but there was nothing there, no traces, no scars. As far as Caroline knew there had been an accident with witches around the eighth month of her pregnancy and she had bled it out, yelling all the while with grief; it was a horrible image, and Caroline couldn't help but shudder. 

Hayley gave a bitter laugh. She was really beautiful, Caroline admitted grudgingly to herself. "Of course you are. Well, he's not here. None of them are, actually. I would say you just missed them, but you really didn't."

"What happened?" Elena asked.

"The usual — they went too far and the witches decided to do something about it, except this time it worked… After they killed Marcel Elijah," something moved imperceptibly in her face at the name, "wasn't too keen on hanging around, but Klaus convinced him to stay and fight. It was horrible. Eventually they had to run away with their tails between their legs." She didn't seem particularly sorry about it, Caroline noticed.

"What about you?"

Hayley shrugged again. "I've got friends here."

"Wolves," Elena said, and Hayley nodded. Caroline vaguely remembered Tyler telling her something about her searching for her parents. Hayley the little orphan; it had irritated her at the time.

"My pack is here," Hayley said, as though trying to justify something to herself. "They're werewolf royalty." Now she seemed to be talking mostly to herself, her eyes lost somewhere behind the ridiculous fountain, beyond the limits of the plantation.

Caroline resisted the urge to snap her fingers in front of her face. "Do you know where we can find Klaus?" she asked instead.

"What do you want with him, anyway?" Hayley asked, giving Caroline a suspicious look. "I thought you two were done a long time ago, after that time in the woods."

Caroline felt her cheeks heat despite herself. "Does everyone know about that?"

"Klaus brags."

"Anyway," Elena said, "it's not about that. It's about Tyler." Caroline remembered how close Tyler and Hayley had been for a while, before she'd betrayed him, and suddenly wished Elena wouldn't have said anything. Well — it was too late now anyway. 

"Yeah? What happened?" Hayley's fingers were twitching slightly, her long bare legs stretched over the stairs. 

"He's dead," Elena said succinctly, and Caroline ducked her head to hide the blow. "We think Klaus may have done it."

"Fuck," Hayley eructed softly, like she'd been punched in the stomach, which —Caroline could relate. "And you think—okay."

"So," Elena pressed — she really could be quite ruthless sometimes, with people that weren't her friends, "do you know where they are?"

"They left the country for a while, but last I heard Klaus was in New York, doing… something there, probably forming his own little cult or something. Elijah went with him."

"What about Rebekah? They didn't stay together?"

There was a flash of something on Hayley's face, maybe pity. She shook her head. "No," she said. "They had a fight."

Which meant that Rebekah was probably hiding in a forest somewhere, if she was lucky, and if she wasn't it meant she had a dagger stuck in her heart and her coffin was hidden in a warehouse somewhere. Well, at least they were predictable.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Elena leaned to say in Caroline's ear, "Do you want to stay the night? We don't have to. This place is creeping me out."

Caroline shivered. She didn't like it either, this meatless carcass of a city, but she was too exhausted to drive, and not matter what she said, Elena wasn't much better. "We should stay," she said. "I'll drive tomorrow." Caroline remembered a conversation with Elena a few years back where she'd admitted that driving at night always brought back to her mind memories of being woken up by the worst phone call of her life. Elena was doing her a favor coming along, the least she could do was spare her the horrific flashbacks. She was having enough for the both of them. "So the nearest airport is…" She wracked her brains for the name, but nothing was coming. Hayley's gaze on her, blank and dispassionate, was setting her nerves on edge.

Elena straightened her back. "We're going to New York," she said in a tone that broke no discussion. "We haven't seen Klaus yet."

Caroline started unpleasantly. "Who put you in charge? You said you were going to help me."

"The condition was that we find Klaus and make sure it wasn't him before going on a completely crazy mission on the other side of the world," Elena retorted. 

"That wasn't—"

Hayley was watching them like they were a mildly amusing sideshow, Caroline remarked irritatedly.

"That way we can see Bonnie and Jeremy," Elena said, managing to sound pleading and stubborn at the same time. Caroline was momentarily put off by the association —Bonnie and Jeremy, as if they were still an item. Her shoulders slumped. She didn't have the energy to fight. 

"We're staying the night," she said, final. 

Elena nodded. Caroline thought Hayley might turn again and leave behind Caroline's cardigan coated with wolf hairs, but she didn't move, getting another cigarette out of thin air and smoking steadily, impervious to their presence. Only when Caroline and Elena started to give signs of leaving did she look at them, remembering their presence. She gave Caroline a blank smile. 

"I need a lift," she said.

Caroline felt her eyebrows raising despite herself. "Where to?"

"New York."

"I thought you had your pack here," Elena cut in, sounding suspicious. Caroline didn't really blame her; she wasn't crazy either about having Hayley huddled in the backseat of the SUV, listening in on their conversations. And she'd already betrayed Tyler once —what was keeping her from doing it again?

"I do," Hayley said. For the first time since she'd appeared crouching naked in the dusty living-room Caroline noticed the deep black circles under her eyes. She'd always seemed annoyingly energetic back at Mystic Falls, but now she was subdued, her eyes lackluster. Losing a baby couldn't be easy, Caroline reflected, and felt a stab of unwanted pity. 

"I have something to do up there," Hayley explained, and when she saw that she wasn't convincing Elena, who was still standing with her arms crossed over her chest, openly confrontational, she added, "I need to talk to Elijah."

It was unexpected, to say the least. Elena's arms dropped to her sides. "Elijah?"

Hayley nodded. Caroline could feel Elena was dying to ask why, what there was between them, and so was Caroline, but neither of them did. 

"What about your pack?" asked Elena. "Won't they mind that you're leaving? And the witches? You said they won, right? You wouldn't still be here if they wasn't some agreement keeping you in the city," she said shrewdly. She'd wanted to do political science at one point. "They're keeping the wolves here, aren't they?"

"Not me," Hayley said, even though Elena had obviously touched a nerve. Caroline remembered her comment about 'werewolf royalty'. She'd thought it was a little pretentious. "Besides, I've done my part. The witches killed my baby; apparently now they feel bad about it." She smiled, wry. 

Elena's brows furrowed. "I thought they wanted… at some point, weren't they protecting it?"

"Well, they changed their minds. That happens a lot here," she stretched an arm, gesturing to the decrepit mansion, "as you can see."

But Elena, after all, was still Elena, and she wanted to know everything. She would be compassionate, kind and gentle: but not before she'd wormed all the information out of Hayley. "Why didn't you go with them?"

"Why should I have?"

"If you and Elijah…"

"No," Hayley said, her face closing off suddenly. "It's more complicated than that."

Katherine was alive somewhere, Caroline remembered suddenly; Elijah hadn't come when she was on her deathbed, but she hadn't died, of course she hadn't. Caroline doubted Katherine Pierce would ever die — maybe slip on a new identity like a brand new Chanel gown, maybe squirrel her soul into someone else's body again, but die? No. The thing was, Caroline had been a bit busy at the time, and besides had never really cared about Katherine all that much, and it was then that Klaus had turned up out of the blue and asked for her confession, holding her forearms against the bark of a tree… But Katherine was alive somewhere, and if what she'd heard was true, Caroline didn't think anyone would compare to her in Elijah's eyes.

"We can take her," she said on instinct, without thinking. Both Elena and Hayley gave her a surprised look, and she colored a little. "I mean, it's not like we don't have room." She nodded at Elena's ridiculous, enormous car. "It doesn't cost us anything."

Elena hesitated for a second, looking at Caroline like she was trying to decrypt a second meaning, then acquiesced. "Sure."

"Thank you," Hayley said. 

After a tense moment of silence, they agreed to take off early the next morning; Hayley led them for dinner to a hole-in-the-wall pub where they had delicious, restoring gumbo and some much-needed alcohol. For once the remarkable vampire tolerance to alcohol came in handy and Caroline gulped down a few glasses that burned their way to her stomach without having to care about driving them all into a pole. Hayley ate heartily but didn't talk much, watching people walk past their table; Caroline could've sworn she was playing the same game she herself had earlier in the day, trying to pick out the unnaturals.

"You waiting for someone?" she asked, mouth half-full. 

Hayley startled, then turned back to her. "What? No. I'm just—" she waved a useless hand, didn't finish her sentence. 

Elena excused herself to the bathroom and for a while they were just sitting there, eating in awkward silence. Caroline couldn't quite forget who Hayley had been to Tyler and Klaus, and Hayley didn't seem particularly eager to trust her either, which, fair's fair. 

"Did you want it?" Caroline asked out of the blue, incapable of keeping it to herself. "Klaus's kid."

Hayley gave her a suspicious look. "It was a long time ago," she said eventually. And then, after a while, "Besides, I didn't really have a choice one way or the other." She meant: how I kept it and how I lost it, and Caroline felt cruel for bringing those memories back. She'd never really liked Hayley, but she'd never hated her, either —there had just been men between them, and men were the only thing to keep two women from becoming friends. Not that they would've, Caroline didn't think, but still.

She didn't think Hayley would say more, but— "You get attached to something that's growing in you, even if it's a freak," she said, absently tearing her napkin into shreds. "I mean, what, half-hybrid, a quarter witch or some shit? That baby was a joke. But I did, I wanted it." She gave a bitter laugh. "Stupid, I guess. Even Klaus didn't care about it in the end, and it was his big project."

She gave Caroline a look, not accusatory, just _is that who you want to go searching for?_ But crossing Klaus's path had always gone against all kinds of advice. Caroline wondered if he really hadn't grieved for his child, hadn't even waited until the dead of night to scream and hurl priceless crystal at the walls, maybe despair and maybe frustration over his powerlessness, the one death he couldn't control. But—

"What about Elijah?"

"What about him?"

"Wasn't he… you know, when you — you lost it, wasn't he sad?"

It was a strange image, actually: Elijah, sad. What Caroline had seen on him most resembling sadness was a sort of sour regret, disappointment maybe. "He helped me," Hayley said softly. "I don't know if he was sad, exactly. I think he was just getting used to the idea, and they move on, it's what they do, right? When you're immortal I guess you don't really have a choice."

 _I'm immortal,_ Caroline thought about saying, but she didn't. In any case she would never be immortal the same way that Elijah was, or Klaus, or Rebekah: manic and haughty and unmerciful, possessed with a beauty so similar to ugliness, that ultimate radiance only beings who have walked through history and come out unscathed can wear on their shoulders. 

"Did you—" she started to ask, despite herself, to know if she and Hayley were the same in some way —it wouldn't have been that surprising— but Elena chose that moment to reappear at the table.

"Did I miss anything?" she asked, exaggeratedly cheerful.

Caroline gave her a look, but Elena only shrugged, unrepentant.

After they finished eating and Hayley left them, making them promise that they would wait for her in front of the plantation the next morning at six, Caroline and Elena debated booking a hotel room, but decided it was too dangerous: they were only staying for one night, and a short one at that; it wasn't worth risking alerting the witches of their presence. They weren't here searching for trouble, but they probably wouldn't see it that way, especially if they were keeping close watch for vampires now that the Originals were gone. Once their presence was noticed getting out of the city would be a nightmare, not to mention keeping what they were doing under wraps. Displaying your vulnerability was rarely a good move.

The night was fitful and uncomfortable. Without consulting Elena, Caroline took the wheel and started driving away from the plantation and thecity. She didn't like feeling like a sitting duck, especially in that place, with its big haunting windows and the dry fountain in the front, looking like someone had cut its life at the knees. It made her anxious. Elena talked quietly for a while about everything and nothing, fashion, classes she'd been following intermittently, everything but Tyler and their strange little roadtrip. Caroline wasn't really listening but Elena didn't seem to mind and her voice was soothing, a soft balm until it melted into steady breathing and Elena's head bumped against the window, the skin of her eyelids stretched so thin it was almost transparent. She hadn't seemed that tired when she was awake. After all this time, Caroline realized, she'd forgotten what spectacular strength Elena had when it came to withstanding whatever life threw at her. She felt a surge of affection. 

The events of the last few days starting catching up to her too and her limbs grew heavier and heavier until her hands started slipping off the wheel. Caroline shook herself awake and took a turn in the outskirts of the city, into a deserted parking lot where she was certain no-one would bother them. She locked the doors, let her hair down, breathed out. The buzzing of her phone in her pocket startled her; when she took it out there was a message from an unknown number. _Don't leave me here_ , it said simply, pleading or commanding, Caroline couldn't tell. Outside the night was syrupy and silent, the inside of the car protected by the thick glass of the windows; Caroline felt strangely sheltered, like everything was remote except this, the breath passing Elena's lips and the soft rumble of the engine. She turned it off. Darkness fell on her like a wreath, and she slipped almost immediately into a profound, dreamless sleep.

When she woke up a few hours later to the chirping of her phone the sun was nowhere to be seen, the fading night broken by a soft golden radiance. Caroline reached over to wake Elena up, but something stopped her: the optical illusion of a halo hanging over the city, a mirage shimmer, rooftops dotted with liquid light. For a second Caroline couldn't look away, didn't dare breathe, and she couldn't remember ever having seen anything so beautiful, except maybe that first and only night they'd spent in Haïti during the honeymoon, the buttery orange spreading over the horizon like a blanket of peace.

She shook Elena's shoulder gently. "Elena. Get up."

Elena snuffled in her sleep. For a few moments Caroline thought she wouldn't wake up and debated leaving her to sleep while she picked up Hayley and they left the city. It seemed like a good idea: that they would slip away unnoticed, without even scraps of conversation to alert the witches' sharp ears, and when Elena woke up they would be miles away, out of danger. But as she was thinking it Elena's eyelids opened suddenly and she was staring right at Caroline, her eyes bright and alert in the half-darkness. She breathed out. 

"Good morning," she said, her voice husky with sleep. 

"Hey," Caroline smiled. "You wanna get some breakfast? We only have to pick up Hayley at six."

"Yeah, okay."

Caroline drove them back into the city in silence. Elena offered to pick up food at one of the street stands so they didn't have to stop on their way and Caroline watched her climb off the car, the defiant line of her back sliding into the crowd. Seized by a strange anxiety, she kept looking intently until Elena reappeared, smiling, greasy donuts and coffee in her hands.

"Let's go," she said when she climbed back into the car, her expression growing determined, and Caroline nodded and drove them to the plantation. 

It looked different in the plain light of day, flattened by the searching light. The disaster seemed even more expanded, like devastation had wanted to do a really good job, touch every corner of Klaus's self-indulgently decadent mansion and submit it to its laws. Idly, Caroline wondered if the witches were the ones who'd done it, if they'd crafted the spells back in their houses, whispered Latin curses about dust and broken glass and yellow, dried-up grass crumbling in the immense gardens; or if someone else had come here in person, modern with their limitless rage and their baseball bats, and wrecked the house themselves. Klaus had no shortage of enemies.

"Fuck," Elena said, in a tone that sounded half-shocked and half-impressed. "I guess they're not coming back anytime soon, are they?"

Caroline didn't answer; instead she fixed her gaze on the edge on the forest, trying to spy Hayley's thin silhouette walking in their direction. The leaves sticking out in the sun were washed out to a pale green. Hayley didn't appear. Caroline looked down at her watch. Five fifty. Maybe she wasn't going to show. Elena had been adamant that they would wait until six, not a minute later, and if Hayley didn't show up it was her loss. For a moment Caroline hadn't recognized her, fooled by the illusion of Elena at eighteen with her bull-headed insistence that everyone deserved to be saved —had to be saved— no matter the cost, that she couldn't let innocents die in her name or in her vicinity.

At five fifty-nine Hayley appeared at the far end of the woods, a tiny dot of a silhouette steadily growing bigger. When she was close enough Caroline couldn't help but recoil slightly at the expression on her face, the set jaw, the hunted eyes. She didn't have any luggage except for a backpack hooked over her shoulder by one strap, the handle dripping with silver charms on thin leather ropes.

"You're late," was all she said. 

Hayley acknowledged her with a nod. "Let's go," she said. Caroline thought about asking her why was wrong, but Elena was already turning the key in the ignition and Caroline understood despite herself what that situational sickness was like, that gnawing in your stomach, the crawling imperative to leave somewhere, bleach a place out of your brain. 

"Let's go," she echoed. They walked to the car in silence.

Hayley didn't hesitate before she slunk in the backseat, gripping the edge of the seat tightly with her right hand; she angled herself so that she was more or less buried in the slanting shadows cushioning the inside of the car, not quite curled up on herself but inconspicuous, like she could disappear at a moment's notice. Elena started chattering and Caroline let herself get swept up in it, forgetting Hayley's silent, cautious presence behind them.

It was nice to have Elena back. It hadn't seemed much, missing her all these years, nearly a decade —and sure, it was a human decade, but Caroline was still living in human years, and it would be a long time until she wasn't. Caroline remembered thinking that it was a natural growing apart, the distance that seeps between childhood friends who move away from each other. There were few letters and even fewer emails, but in itself that didn't matter much: Mystic Falls had that way of binding people forever for better or for worse, and Caroline remembered being certain that if they met again, they would pick up right where they left off, without missing a beat.

They hadn't, though, picked up where they left off, not really. There had been a beat of awkwardness that first night, a second where Caroline had thought Elena might close the door in her face, ask who she was, what she was doing here, before recognition flashed in her eyes and she opened her arms for Caroline, soothing and familiar. Even now there was something slightly off about the way they were together. Elena was doing her best to ignore it, and Caroline was going along with it because she couldn't think of an alternative, but it was strange; not exactly uncomfortable. 

If Hayley picked up on their dynamic she said nothing. She wouldn't have been welcome to. Caroline tuned Elena out a little when the city started to disappear from the rearview mirror, emotion knotting in her chest. Without Klaus's presence even being there had felt futile, and even a little mean —but she would have plenty of time to return and get the proper tour when she'd avenged Tyler, wouldn't she? The French Quarter would wait, witches or no witches. When she looked at the backseat again to check on Hayley she was pretending to look out the window but really spying at the road behind them from the corner of her eye, trying to see if they were being followed. 

"What?" Caroline snapped when she couldn't take any more of her little game. 

Hayley started. "Nothing."

Elena gave Caroline a look, maybe to tell her to settle down, but Caroline ignored her. She felt faintly sick, like she ought to ask that Elena park by the side of the road to let her puke her guts out—such a stupid reaction, and to what?

"If the way you're looking at that otherwise pretty standard strip of asphalt is any indication, not nothing. And I'd rather know beforehand if we're going to be attacked by a swarm of angry witches."

"What, so you can dump me on the side of the road?" Hayley retorted angrily. 

"I'm not—" but before she could say anything really bitchy Elena had to swerve with all her might, because a wolf had appeared on the middle of the road — and then two, roughly the size of baby cows, snarling, their jaws open and white. Elena handled the enormous car deftly and avoided running into them just barely, the car zigzagging crazily on the road. Caroline's body jerked; she clawed a hand on the dashboard in front of her. Elena kept her foot on the gas and for the longest ten minutes in Caroline's life it was the landscape whizzing past them in a blur on both sides and the wolves behind them, running in giant leaps, their eyes savage —until Caroline blinked and they were gone as quickly as they'd appeared. Caroline breathed out.

"Elena," she said, touching Elena's hand, still white-knuckled on the wheel, "Elena. It's okay. They're gone."

"What? Did I lose them?"

"I don't know what happened, but they're gone. You can—" Elena got it; soon she was driving like a normal person again instead of someone trying to outrun the fucking hounds of hell. But her face was still constricted, her eyes wide and hallucinated.

She twisted in her seat. "What the fuck?" she shouted at Hayley, her voice thick with panic. 

Caroline waited a minute for her heart to stop hammering before laying a reassuring hand on Elena's forearm. She didn't feel particularly reassured herself, but Elena and Hayley were a Molotov cocktail just waiting to blow up in their faces, which Caroline would rather avoid.

Silence fell on the car again. Caroline glared at the backseat. "Wanna tell us what that was?"

"My pack," Hayley said matter-or-factly. "They weren't exactly on board with me leaving. You're lucky they only sent two."

"Lu — _lucky_?" Elena sputtered. "And you couldn't have warned us about this before we almost crashed into a ditch?"

Hayley shrugged, tense. "You wouldn't have agreed to take me."

"With good reason!"

Caroline thought about denying it, but it was true —so instead she said, "They did seem kinda keen not to let you go back there, actually. What, are you suddenly popular or something?"

Hayley gave her a slight, sharp grin in which glinted a hint of wolf. "I told you they liked me. By the way, if they'd been keen we wouldn't be here to talk about it."

Caroline gave a chuckle and that was it, a détente of sorts —for some reason Elena being so hostile to Hayley sort of forced her to make nice, so that the journey wouldn't end in a triple homicide. They would never be best friends, but if they had to ride all the way to New York together, making nice did seem the best alternative. In high school Caroline had been the stereotype of the bitchy cheerleader and had made a speciality of conversational evisceration, but now it just didn't feel worth the effort. Hayley wasn't _awful_ —it wasn't her fault she'd got knocked up by Klaus, after all. Caroline couldn't imagine what would've happened if it was her one-night-stand that had gone awry. It wasn't like Hayley had been head over heels for Klaus at the time either, and having your life commandeered like that just because your bun in the oven happened to be the vampire version of the antichrist… yeah.

Hayley rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on." 

"What?"

"You're doing the whole Lifetime movie thing in your head, I can feel it. It's fine. My life isn't some tragic melodrama just because I made a bad judgment call that landed me in the paws of your pal Klaus."

"I never said that," Caroline said, coloring a little. Elena was studiously ignoring their conversation.

"But you were thinking it."

Guilty as charged. Caroline didn't deny it, and for a while it was just the three of them, lost in their thoughts, and outside the windows Louisiana melting into Mississipi melting into Tennessee. They stopped for lunch at a reststop where Caroline and Elena nibbled on easily-subdued truckers behind the buildings and Hayley pretended not to notice; when night started to fall and Elena's yawns got more and more regular Caroline offered to take up driving. They didn't ask Hayley; she didn't offer. Tacitly, they decided not to stop for the night, to keep driving so they could be in New York by the morning, keeping up the rhythm. Caroline couldn't help but feel like if they stopped, if she had a moment to think then she would collapse, deflate like a plastic balloon. So they traded places and within a half-hour Elena was asleep, an arm slung over her eyes, infuriatingly graceful. The silence with Hayley wasn't exactly uncomfortable —it was a no man's land in which they picked up subtle things about each other that couldn't be learned in a stand-off: the rhythm of each other's breathing; a baseline for their lies; the heat oozing out of Hayley's body, so similar to Tyler's, animal heat. Even Elena's shoulders finally relaxed in her sleep, as though she'd resigned herself to the inevitability of Hayley's presence.

Caroline wasn't expecting it at all, and in fact was ever-so-slightly dozing off when Hayley's voice cut through the silence. "Have you ever loved someone out of your league?"

It was a laughable question, in all the ways it wasn't excruciating. "Yeah. Why are you asking?"

She glanced at the mirror: Hayley's body was curled like a comma, her forehead pressed against the window, palms splayed wide on her stomach. "I know you have Tyler, fairytale couple and all that…" It felt like a punch in the stomach but Hayley didn't notice, didn't stop talking, "but didn't you ever get pissed off about that true love shtick, how if you're in love with one half of those couples you're just wasting your time? Sometimes you can't compete, you know? Didn't you ever get angry about that?"

Guilt twisted in Caroline's gut. But she only said, "True love? What is that, anyway?"

Hayley shrugged in the thin rectangular mirror. "They go on and on about it," she said. "You'd think they'd know better, after ten centuries years… right?" She wasn't even pretending this wasn't about Elijah, Caroline thought, and she was asking because… well. 

She tried thinking of an answer that wouldn't incriminate her, but came up blank. "I guess they're romantics," she said.

"I wore a wedding dress for him once, you know," Hayley went on, talking to herself now —which explained why she didn't see the pang of pure panic that went through Caroline at the words, _does she know? Did he tell her that, too? No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't dare._ "For Mardi Gras. I was getting dressed, and he just—" she made a vague, angry gesture, "swans in, all like, do you need help with that? I mean, who does that? Noble my ass, he's a fucking tease."

Caroline couldn't help a peal of incredulous laughter. She tore her eyes off the road to look back at Hayley: she was smiling too, her eyes crinkled at the corners. Yeah. She wasn't as repulsive as Caroline had made her up to be in her mind, over the years.

"He really did that?"

"That's the least of it, actually. All the time I was pregnant with his brother's child he would always be with me, touching me with his handsome fucking face and his _suits_ … and he wouldn't kiss me. Said it was wrong, that I belonged to his brother or some misogynistic shit like that. I mean. I don't have another hundred years, you know? We're not all immortal."

Caroline chuckled again. The guilt was still there, but it had settled in her stomach, almost friendly, like the poisonous hope that Tyler was waiting for her somewhere in the ether where only witches and mediums could see.

"I should've known better. I wasn't… I made good decisions before I met you guys, actually. Never should've gone to Mystic Falls in the first place."

"You're telling me. I emigrated to _Vermont_ to get away from that place. I don't think any other town in the United States has seen that amount of curses."

Hayley laughed, rueful. "Do they even have natural deaths back there anymore? The three humans back there must have been compelled so often their whole life must be one big black hole."

It was a strange subject to joke about, but when you were a vampire —or a werewolf— you were bound to acquire a repertoire of supernatural jokes at one point or another, it was just fated.

Hayley was playing with her hair, chewing a strand of it, even though she didn't seem to notice. Caroline didn't tell her. It made her seem strangely childish, but it also seemed to be comforting her. They all needed some comforting. 

"I should have stayed away from Klaus," she said eventually. 

Caroline nodded. "I know the feeling."

Though she didn't, not really, because she'd never quite been able to make herself regret being with him; but there was still a feeling of companionship with Hayley, because weren't they both just girls who had gotten fucked over by powers too big to understand, too overwhelming to resist?

"But I guess it's useless to resist them," Hayley pondered quietly. "I mean, how do you win this kind of battle? Against them, against anything they want. I should've known from the moment he told me —he had this face, you know, I've been in love twice in my life, twice in a thousand years? And all I could think was, it's not that precious a commodity. It's stupid to fall in love with someone like that. They think they're the ones who get their hearts broken but they're blind, that's all." She took a breath, and then, "Do you know her?"

"What?"

"Katherine Pierce. Do you know her?"

"A little. Back in Mystic Falls she liked to make a return once in a while, see if she couldn't annoy one of us to death."

 _I would marry you a hundred times over,_ she remembered, Klaus's voice fresh and fervent in her mind as though it were yesterday that he had said it, his lips sill pressed against her spine, fingers splayed on her stomach. That wasn't it —she hadn't wanted to believe it then, and she didn't want to believe it now. Why should she be claimed, why should she belong to anyone, to any sort of love, mythical or not, all-powerful or not, if she hadn't chosen to? _That's how love works._ Well, no. (Though she couldn't deny Hayley's words were unearthing an uneasy kind of guilt inside her, a feeling that she should apologize for Elijah and his failure to love in any other way than consistently, for centuries on end.)

"Believe me," she said out of a perverse sense of duty, "these two deserve each other."

Hayley laughed, loud and almost joyous. "Thanks."

Curiosity got the better of Caroline and she asked, "What do you see in him, anyway?" It only occurred to her afterwards that it was a bit of an hypocritical thing to ask, given all that had happened, but she meant it. She still didn't know what it was about Klaus that made her fall into his trap every time she got close enough; couldn't fathom it, really. 

Hayley seemed to understand. "He was just… kind. I know it seems strange when you say it, but he was. Klaus basically just moved me into his house when he found out I was pregnant and forbade me to go outside or do anything. I was freaking out, you know? But Elijah… he would talk to me like I was a person, not just a walking incubator. He was proud of me." She shrugged. "I don't know. It felt good, being near him. Besides, it's not like he's hard on the eyes either."

Caroline laughed. "Yeah, none of them are. It would be easier, wouldn't it?"

"I felt like it would be something, being loved by someone like that." She closed her eyes in the rearview mirror. "I guess I thought it made you worthwhile, for some reason, to be with them. Like it makes you more than you are." A chuckle. "Stupid, right?"

Saying she didn't know what that felt like would be a lie —how many times had Caroline done just that, gone with someone because she felt he added something to her, something essential, that made her bigger and stronger and more authentic?— But now —now it was over and she was alone. What could she say? 

"No," she cleared her throat, "no, I get it."

Hayley nodded silently. Caroline's eyes slid to Elena out of habit, her elegantly sprawled form on the passenger seat, temple pressed against the window, fingers uncurled around her phone as though she was waiting for someone to call. Hayley followed her gaze but didn't comment and Caroline felt a surge of gratefulness towards her, which —weird. Feeling kinship for Hayley was really the last thing she needed.

Hayley must've felt that, because she insisted, her voice light, "You know, we're not so different, you and me. We were just distractions: things you take and play with, and break, and we're the ones who had to pick up the pieces. You think I don't know I was Klaus's distraction from you? If he couldn't have you… and didn't your friends send you to turn his head so that they could plot to kill him? When Klaus saw Elijah liked me he pouted a little, but in the end he pushed me towards him when he got bored of being possessive and realized the only thing to do was wait. It's fine once you're aware of it."

Caroline squirmed in her seat, a little uncomfortable. "Okay, alright, you win. We're the same."

There was a quick peal of laughter, and when Caroline turned her head again to peek at the backseat —she shouldn't do that so often, it would be stupid to have a real accident after they'd just avoided being attacked by angry werewolves— Hayley was startlingly charming, her head tilted to the side, eyes crinkled with amusement. 

"Sorry I said you were a bitch behind your back when we were in Mystic Falls," Caroline grumbled, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "And this morning."

"I probably said it once or twice, too," Hayley said, which wasn't really an apology, but Caroline had called her a lot of worse things than a bitch and she wasn't going to apologize for those either. In general her preferred MO was not to regret things she couldn't change —what was the use? Besides, if there was a time to be practical it had to be now. 

After that the atmosphere was lighter, more relaxed. It was stupid, that little ceasefire, Caroline knew it and Hayley probably knew it too and once she woke up Elena would undoubtedly remind them both, but for the moment it felt better than simmering in uncertainty, their secrets a thick wall between them. In the end Hayley was right, they weren't that different, and it didn't hurt to realize that there was some common ground between them. Those fucking Originals. 

The rest of the trip was quiet. After Elena woke up and took the wheel again, Caroline let herself slump in the passenger seat, drinking in the landscapes. When she was younger there'd always been this urge —not to travel, but to leave, to leave Mystic Falls behind, not forever of course, just a little, for a breather, and that urge had only intensified once that whole vampire business had started. Sometimes she wondered: had Klaus been able to read that on her, or was the world wrapped in a ribbon a line he fed to every pretty girl he met during his travels? For a second wanderlust had pushed her to tip forward into his arms and let him whisk her away to exotic locations; one second before the other, overwhelming parts of her took over, duty and friendship and loyalty most of all. 

She'd thought she'd travel more with Tyler once they got married and split from the rest of the gang, got their well-deserved peace, but that hadn't happened either. Not that she would take back any second of her time with Tyler, except maybe for a few mistakes and that last conversation… but that was just how it went: they got married and moved to Florida, and then, when Caroline had sucked all the light out of the sun and started to get bored of the beaches they moved to Vermont. Caroline remembered with painful precision what she'd thought then: one for you, one for me. That was what she'd said, convinced that they had forever to slowly get accustomed to this sudden intimacy and melt into each other's habits, even though eternity was a hard concept to wrap your head around when the age you got stuck to was the age of eternal in-betweens. She'd thought, marriage is a compromise, isn't it? but with such radiant happiness she felt a little ashamed of it now. 

So she'd never travelled, not really, not to Europe or Africa or Asia and barely even to the surrounding states, and now Tyler was dead and she was reduced to looking out the window on her way to New York to find out if Klaus fucking Mikaelson was the one who'd torn his heart out of his chest, even though she was certain he wasn't. It was all ridiculous, and sad —and outside the car it was summer on sea-like expanses of fields, mountains in the distance, cities blinking by, train tracks. Caroline thought about opening the window, but even imagining the onslaught of sensations —sounds, smells, the remote howling of ambulances in the distance— gave her the beginnings of a headache. She was too tired for this shit. Why did Tyler have to die? 

She startled when a hand found hers; when she looked over Elena's eyes were flickering between the road and her face, full with soft pity. It had always been surprising to Caroline, that ability she had to feel sorry so deeply for everyone, that empathy, and without meaning to Caroline got a little more choked up. This wasn't the time to cry, she reminded herself sternly. 

"You can cry if you want," Elena said.

Caroline flicked a meaningful look towards the backseat. It was one thing to be cordial with Hayley, even to laugh with her, and entirely another to get weepy in front of her. Elena shrugged. She didn't care much about Hayley either way, Caroline read. Which was funny, in a sense, because they'd never really interacted in the past; Elena didn't have any other reasons than Hayley's acquaintance with the Originals and Caroline's own dislike of her to hate her, but she did, or she seemed to. Then again, maybe it was just indifference. Not that any of it mattered; in a few hours they'd unload her on the side of the road and leave her to make her own way in the city, find Elijah if she still wanted to, if she didn't realize she'd better cut her way out sooner rather than later. 

There was advice to give but it wasn't Caroline's place to give it and besides, Hayley wouldn't take it, Caroline knew; she wouldn't have taken it either. She squeezed Elena hand, linking their fingers together for a second, then released her so she could drive and turned back to the window. They'd reached the very edge of the city, rows and rows of buildings bathed in pale yellow light like the glowing pearls of a disordered necklace. Klaus had been right: there were things to see, everywhere, a whole sprawling universe full of stars and wonders and violence and beauty. Too bad she didn't care anymore. 

Steadily, by increments, the roads got denser around them, tighter, a network of winding asphalt tongues until there was no escape possible, no going back, four lanes on each side. Caroline burrowed into the seat, suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic. She turned to the backseat to distract herself; Hayley was sleeping, still curled in onto herself, looking young. Caroline cleared her throat. 

"Hey. Hayley."

Hayley murmured in her sleep. Her reflexes should've been quicker, Caroline thought, rote, even though it was years since she'd practiced whipping her fangs out every night before sleep, when danger was everywhere. But then they'd been safe, Tyler and her, or so she'd thought —when they'd found her Hayley was in a city of ashes, naked and almost feral. She should know better. Caroline made her voice harder. 

"Hayley. Wake up. We're here."

This time Hayley's head snapped up, her yellow wolf eyes glowing in the not-quite-darkness. Elena cut them a look in the rearview mirror, amused and a little mean.

"What?" Hayley snapped, her voice almost a growl. 

"Relax. We're in New York. Where do you want us to drop you?"

Hayley's face fell a little, still unguarded from having just been woken up. It wasn't hard to see she hadn't thought further than getting out of New Orleans and now that she was at the end of the trip she was terrified. For the first time since she'd risen from the dust in Klaus's mansion Caroline remembered that despite their twin frames, the narrow waist and pouting lips, Hayley was younger than her. It showed, now. 

Ignoring Elena's gaze on her, she said, "You can stay with us tonight if you want. We'll just get a hotel. You're probably tired. You can go tomorrow morning, if you're not in a hurry."

Hayley's eyes flashed desperate with relief, just for a second. 

"Thanks," she said gruffly, over Elena's protests. 

When they stopped at a gas station at the mouth of the city before getting engulfed in its gaping, blinking immensity, Elena stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her. Caroline rolled her eyes, then got out too. 

"It's fine," she snapped. "It's just one night. What is she going to do, gnaw on us?"

"I thought you hated her," Elena said pointedly, shoving the pump into the side of the car. 

Caroline shrugged. "She's okay. It's not her fault she banged Klaus and he fucked her over." She felt a twinge at that, went to say, _I would know_ then remembered that Elena didn't. She'd thought of telling her before, a long time ago, but after the wedding everyone had been so happy and it had seemed obscene, and then they hadn't seen each other that often, and why ruin those occasions with some ugly secret that didn't even matter? Maybe it was cowardice. 

"She's just going to be trouble, I can tell," Elena grumbled, but Caroline could see that she was already giving in. When she passed by her to get them some snacks to eat in lieu of a late lunch on their way to the hotel she made sure to nudge her shoulder. There were hundreds of ways to tell someone I love you, weren't there? 

"Thank you," she said under her breath. 

Over the last half-hour of driving to the hotel Caroline portioned out the sweets and they each ate that and their energy bar without much talking; when Hayley got melted chocolate on the corners of her mouth Caroline told her, sliding a smile her way, and Elena let out a frankly impressive string of curses as they got lost thirty times before finally reaching the hotel that they had had the foresight —for once— to call in advance. There were things to do, people to hunt, but that was tomorrow, and for now they tried not to think of anything else but showers and starch sheets in beds they wouldn't have to make in the morning (though Elena probably would, the freak).

The hotel was nondescript, a high and dark building in Manhattan. It had underground parking, so Elena parked her ridiculous car and they got out in the lurid underground half-darkness, looking gaunt under the yellow light. Caroline noticed that Hayley was walking a little hunched, as though the city made her feel caged. It wasn't really surprising: animals are always animals, no matter what envelope they hide in. Caroline remembered Tyler getting jumpy on the few occasions that they'd wandered into Los Angeles, long nights filled with glitter and alcohol to soak it all in before they retreated back into the vast emptiness of their mountains. In New Orleans he was afraid too, but that was different —there were other reasons. 

Now that she was thinking about it actually, a lot of things about Hayley reminded her of Tyler. They worked the same, their furnace bodies and the strong bones of their faces, easily shifted; their eyes, slanted and dark, lighting yellow at the first sign of trouble. They'd slept together, too, a long time ago: Caroline remembered leveraging that infidelity —although it wasn't one, not really— against her own, to try and find a balance. She'd always been good at convincing herself.

On the other hand there was something about Hayley. This was all about surviving, after all, surviving the pounding impossibility of grief, of Tyler being gone. Elena was her best friend but everything she'd lost, she'd lost with her martyred, swan-necked despair, and Caroline wasn't like that. Caroline wanted to burn the world down one minute and curl into a ball under the covers the next. Caroline was selfish and she was a survivor: a survivor like Hayley was a survivor, a girl —woman— whose fur had rippled in the chiaroscuro of the abandoned mansion and who'd drawn up in front of their eyes like the last living thing in this apocalyptic city. Yes —there was something about her, about Hayley. 

The sound of the keycard sliding into the door and unlocking it jerked her out of her thoughts. "Room for three," Elena announced grimly. "Stretching the budget."

Hayley gave a fluid shrug and slid past Elena into the room. She dumped her little bag at the foot of the bed she chose —next to the window: nearest escape point—, the charms clinking, then toed off her sandals and curled into a sleeping position on the bed.

Elena rolled her eyes. "Polite," she remarked bitchily. 

Caroline kissed her cheek, a fleeting touch. "Thanks for agreeing to take her." She thought about explaining why she'd offered in the first place —I felt pity for her; she reminds me of Ty; someone ought to get what they want—, but she couldn't choose. 

"Do you know how we're going to find Klaus?"

Caroline's first instinct was to say, _he'll find us_ —in the past that was how it had always happened, the way he'd seemed to sniff out her presence as soon as she came into the room, his overly bright eyes roaming to find her. It had used to make her uncomfortable, but in the end what was more worrying was when it didn't, when it made her feel something else instead. She felt Tyler's ghost —or at least the pale ersatz of it conjured by her guilt— rearing up again and she felt sick, nausea rising in her chest. Truth was —truth was, imagining what he might say felt like the coward's way out when he was probably standing right beside her, shouting words she couldn't hear. The thought made her antsy, her hands shaking at her sides, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to control it. Bonnie would know where Jeremy was; they'd work something out with him. 

"No idea. You're the one who wanted to find him, remember?"

"You're not curious?"

"He didn't do it," Caroline said, trying not to ask herself how she was so sure. It was just logic —Elena was being irrational, choosing to follow her gut even though it was wrong. "I know he didn't."

Elena didn't insist, and they left it at that. They considered starting the search for Klaus right away but after twenty hours straight of driving their bones felt like they'd crumbled to dust, so they just settled on one of the beds and set the TV on low volume not to wake Hayley up, cuddling into each other. A few hours passed like that, staring at stupid programs without ever bothering to change the channel, feeding off each other's warmth. Elena ordered room service so they could get a real lunch —"More or less," she grimaced when she poked the hotel's lackluster steak with her fork— in them for the day after, and though the nausea was still poking at her ribs when she looked down at her plate Caroline ate dutifully. It tasted like cardboard and ashes. She pressed closer against Elena's side and waited for time to pass. 

When night finally started falling and Hayley was still curled on her bed, sometimes groaning unintelligible threats in her sleep, Elena stretched and swung her legs over the mattress.

"What are we going to do with her?" she asked without looking at Hayley, resting her hands on her knees.

Caroline sighed. Not this again. "I told you, El, it's just one night. Tomorrow she'll be gone and we'll never hear of her again. I don't know why you're so paranoid."

"I don't know why you're not!" She knuckled her eyes. "I don't want—listen, this wolf thing wasn't cool. For all we know she's Elijah's lackey and she's leading us right into a trap."

Caroline clucked her tongue, annoyed. "That doesn't make any sense. What would they want with us? We haven't been in contact with the Originals for years —at least I haven't, have you?"

Elena shook her head no, still looking skeptical. "I just don't like her," she said after a while, sitting on her own bed and absently arranging the pillows. 

Caroline rested her back against the headboard. "Why?"

Elena shrugged, whipping her T-shirt over her head. She was wearing a blue bra, more understated than the nice lacey stuff she'd used to wear in high school. But she was beautiful —she'd always been beautiful. In fact she was one of the rare people Caroline knew who managed to be attractive in all circumstances, whether crying fountains or dripping with blood and guts. 

"Just trust me on this," she said softly. "She won't betray us. She's not that kind of person, and you know I'm awesome at first impressions."

That wasn't exactly true, but Elena didn't call her on it. "If you say so. I wouldn't say no to putting them all out of commission once and for all, to be honest. It always leaves me a bad aftertaste, knowing that freaking family is still out there doing God knows what, probably slaughtering innocents and plotting machinations in baroque mansions again."

She grabbed her vanity out of her bag. On the bed near the window, Hayley's shoulders had relaxed and she was sleeping, breathing faintly through her mouth.

"Yeah," Caroline said. She would have been alarmed if she didn't know Elena so well; but she did. "Leave some hot water for me, okay?"

Elena nodded, closing the bathroom door behind her. Without her the silence was almost overwhelming, and Caroline couldn't help but wobble on her feet a little. Why was the world always so unstable? She'd been surrounded by people since they'd left Mystic Falls, she realized, not a second with herself and her thoughts, not a chance to stumble into the pit of acid that was sitting at the bottom of her stomach. She sat on the edge of the bed, stunned. In the bathroom the shower spray started, but the sound was muted in her ears, remote.

It took her a few minutes before she realized she was having a panic attack. If she weren't, well, dead, she would have been tachycardic, but as it was a thick, oppressive feeling was weighing on her instead, like her breath was stuck in her throat and paralysis was slowly spreading to her limbs, rooting her to the spot. It would pass —everything always passed— but Tyler would still be dead when it was gone, and what was the point? She felt the tears coming back, pooling at the corners of her eyes and threatening to pour out. It was stupid. It was stupid, wasn't it? She was just being a girl again, incapable of grinding her teeth and bearing it like everyone else… It was stupid, this had happened too much since —since Tyler's death, what would it change? It wouldn't change anything. Tyler would have wanted her to do something. Tyler wouldn't have cried on her grave. Tyler would have trashed a room and stomped over her killer's bowels. Why couldn't she make him proud, for once? 

It must not have laster longer than ten minutes, shaking and still, her nails digging into her palms, but it felt like a decade. Her head was filled with things she'd stopped believed a long time ago, after high school, when she'd realized she wasn't what people thought she was, an empty-headed bimbo whose only skill was to throw a pompom around. Of course she wasn't. But right now she felt seventeen, sixteen, younger than she'd ever been, and Tyler was gone.

"You okay?"

She wanted to spin around but couldn't. Hayley's voice echoed in her head —okay, okay, okay? She breathed in once, hacked. "I thought you were sleeping."

She heard the rustle of Hayley's shrug against the bedding. She hadn't even undressed before dropping asleep —was she too tired or was it another of those things, a way to always be ready to run? 

"I never really sleep," Hayley said after a while, and then, like she felt obligated to commiserate, maybe, in a strange way: "The witches got me when I was sleeping. The baby, I mean. They got the baby while I was sleeping."

The horror of it struck Caroline right in the chest. In the bathroom the shower was still going. Elena was her best friend, Caroline remembered, she'd agreed to leave everything for this chase without even knowing how long it would take, without asking any questions. Her best friend. 

"I'm sorry," she said. 

"Shit happens."

In, out. She felt like she would suffocate if she didn't remember to breathe. Or, well. Dying wasn't really an option, was it? She kept forgetting —it's just that these days death felt so easy. You could be arguing one minute and lying on the damp forest ground the next. 

"So," Hayley said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Caroline whispered, because what was she going to say? I'm having a panic attack? It was still Hayley, after all. "Go back to sleep. You'll need your beauty rest if you're going to be scouring the city searching for Elijah."

Hayley breathed a "Yeah" but this time her voice was crumbling. Touché. She'd never learned how to pretend, that girl, had she? You could always read all of it on her face, anger, frustration, relief. It was exhausting.

After a while the sound of Hayley standing to attention melted into her regular breathing, even though it didn't feel as real this time, now that Caroline knew that a part of her was listening, waiting, the animal inside her crouched and on its guard. It took several more minutes but she relaxed too, her hands unclenching, the marks her nails had left healing quickly, skin pulling over the red gashes; Caroline rested her forehead in her palms, trying to push the headache to the back of her mind. A little blood wouldn't have been unwelcome right about now.

Without thinking, she crouched on the ground and reached for Elena's bag. She was an expert packer —yet another irritatingly perfect thing about her—; she was bound to have taken some blood bags. They'd never been Caroline's favorite, but it would do for now, for coating the hole where her heart ought to have been, for calming her pounding headache. If she drank she wouldn't have to think.

"Bingo," she said softly when she found four bags neatly stacked at the bottom of Elena's small suitcase. She grabbed one and tore through it greedily with her teeth, sucking thick blood out of the plastic. She'd hate herself for it later, letting go, the smears of red around her mouth and the heavy nausea already settling in her ribcage: but right now she was just too hungry to care. 

Elena frowned when she came out of the bathroom and found her sitting cross-legged on the carpet, deep into the third bag. "I was keeping those for later," she said, dropping her vanity on the bed, but she didn't seem mad. 

"Sorry," Caroline said around a mouthful.

For a while Elena didn't say anything, just stood there with her wet hair and a green towel wrapped around her bust, beautiful like the first time Caroline had seen her anything less than perfect, a few months into their acquaintance, watching her pull on a bathing suit from the corner of her eye. Elena watched her finish the bag, shaking her head when Caroline remembered her manners and held it out for her, a little embarrassed.

"I feel sick," she said after, leaning back against the side of the bed. 

Elena pulled on underwear and a shirt —probably Stefan's—under her towel and sat down next to Caroline. "You always feel sick when you drink too much," she said gently. 

"Not just that." Caroline wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, frowning when it came back bloody. Elena reached for her and cleaned it with a corner of her towel, finger by finger. Caroline would have laughed at her if she hadn't been so choked up. "It's just… does it ever stop hurting? I loved him, Elena. I can't remember the last time I told him."

"He knew," Elena said, soothing. 

_Did he?_ The secret felt heavy on her tongue, silt on the bed of a river. She repeated, "I can't remember the last time I told him" to hammer the point in, because she didn't, she couldn't pin it down, the last time she'd said it without resentment or guilt or irony, _I love you_ , the simplicity of those three essential words. "I thought we had forever. I forgot."

Now her eyes were closed, to keep the tears in, bitter salt against her cornea; she heard shifting and suddenly Elena's arms were around her, her skin uncomfortable and cold, her wet hair stuck to the swell of Caroline's cheek; but her touch felt like a wave pulling over her, making everything muted and almost bearable. 

"I'm sorry," Elena said softly, and pressed closer, the soft material of her shirt brushing against Caroline's arm. "I'm so sorry, Care."

 _Me too_ , Caroline wanted to say, but she was sobbing again and it was all feeling repetitive, that crumbling down like a house of cards every time people weren't looking —how long was it going to last? How long before she could go back to Vermont, before she could see a forest without also seeing his body sprawled there on the ground, his ribs bloody and broken, heartless? How long —or would it last forever?

Elena was talking, she noticed after a while; a low and soothing murmur, like a siren chant. "It's gonna be okay, Care. It's going to be alright."

Caroline let the words overwhelm her, rub their calming rhythm into her skin, until she felt steady enough to look up at Elena and ask, "Is it? Is it going to be okay?"

Elena looked caught in the middle of a lie. It hurt. It hurt —it sliced around Caroline's heart, a bloody, messy cut, overflowing.

"Thought so," Caroline said, her tongue like lead in her mouth. She sniffed; when she tried to get on her knees she stumbled backwards and Elena's hand settled on her back, steadying her. Despite herself, Caroline remembered Elena at her parents' funeral, her face bloodless, holding Jeremy's hand, serious and high-chinned and noble. She hadn't needed anyone to steady her. "Come on. We have things to do."

"Sit down," Elena whispered. "We have time. We'll do those things tomorrow, okay?" Her thumb rubbed the knobs of Caroline's spine in tiny circles, emanating warmth. "It's okay to be sad."

Caroline shook her head. "Tyler wouldn't want me sniffling over him. He'd want me to _do_ something. You know how he hates sitting still. He'd want me to fight for him, find the asshole who—" she couldn't go further.

Elena's eyes softened, if that was possible. "Tyler is dead, Care."

Funny, the power those words had over, to cut her at the knees and render her completely useless, a puppet with its strings suddenly snipped off. _Tyler is dead._ But she knew that, didn't she? No-one knew it better than her. Why was it still so surprising? 

She spent a long time burrowed in Elena's chest. It occurred to her that their position was uncomfortable: that the carpet pattern was probably getting imprinted on the skin of her legs, her elbow lodged in Elena's ribs; that she was pathetic, that she ought to dry her eyes and get up; that Elena had already comforted her enough for more lifetimes that they had and that crying about Tyler's death wasn't going to resuscitate him. It all occurred to her, but she didn't move, didn't try to stop the tears leaking from her eyes and onto Elena's neck.

And Elena —Elena held her, of course she did. She didn't say anything when Caroline grabbed her shirt between her curled fists and pulled, just to have something to tear apart. She held her head like a baby, let her cry. 

"Does it ever stop hurting?" Caroline asked around a moan, without meaning to, the words muffled by the soft skin of Elena's neck. 

She heard Elena's heartbeat quicken to a tight thump inside her skin, one, two, three skittish beats and then settle. "No," she said. You shouldn't need more than one hand to count the people you've lost, Caroline thought. "But it gets better, I swear it does. Jenna…" Her hands stilled, fingers splayed at the nape of Caroline's neck, tangled in her hair. "I still remember so much about her, every argument we had, every time she burnt dinner and we had to order take-out. I remember everything, but I can feel it fading. Maybe it's different for other people, but for us… we're the ones who're eternal, so memory has to take a backseat. We can't carry all those things forever, it doesn't matter how much we love them." She added, softer, "I think they're still alive, somewhere, in some way. I feel them, sometimes. It's like they're looking over us."

Her voice was honey, a calm golden river, a fix, soothing her to sleep; Caroline thought blurrily, she was always the one who knew the words, in church.

"It takes time," Elena continued. She wasn't comforting Caroline anymore; she had the laminated voice of a ghost, walking in the ashes of her burnt house. "You can't burn memories, humanity switch or no humanity switch. You can't make it stop hurting forever. But I don't remember my parents' faces anymore, not really, not well. I have a picture in my wallet but I don't even take it out that often. That's what happens. It gets better, Caroline. It starts stinging less after a while." She cradled Caroline's head in her hands, tender. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay." A breath. "I love you."

It was stupid to believe her, _you'll be okay_ doled out like candy, to make the tears stop; but she did. She closed her eyes, a firm press down of her eyelids in what she hoped conveyed, _alright_. Elena got it. Caroline couldn't help her eyelids from slipping down again —she hadn't realized she was so tired— but she saw, in glances, Elena stand up and tug her hair into a loose ponytail, and reach for Caroline's hand…

"There you go," she said when she had her sprawled gracelessly on the middle bed, sitting next to her, undoing her shoes. There were things to do, Caroline had wanted to take a shower, plan, call people, but now the exhaustion was pulling her under. It was impossible to get used to it, this feeling of constantly walking around with your insides scooped out, like you'd gotten eviscerated when no-one was looking. 

"Thanks," Caroline said, or at least she thought she said it, although what came out was probably only an intelligible mumbling. 

"I love you," Elena repeated, a little forceful. Then she was stripping Caroline out of her clothes with unbearable gentleness, pulling the blankets over her, kissing her forehead, a feather touch of her lips that felt like a shot of warmth through Caroline's body, enduring against the grey coldness of grief. 

There was a bit of puttering around the room. Caroline felt suspended between sleep and wakefulness; she couldn't stop turning Elena's words in her head, _you can't burn memories; it starts stinging less; you'll be okay_ , a litany of promises slowly searing themselves in her mind. 

In her last waking moments, she opened her eyes with excruciating effort, to get a glimpse of something beyond the inside of her head —and caught sight of two yellow eyes fringed with dark lashes, glowing in the obscurity, firmly open as though to say, _I'm listening_. They blinked once, a permission, maybe an offering for peace. 

Caroline let herself fall. 


	3. Chapter 3

The room was still dark when she woke up. They hadn't bothered closing the blinds, or even the drapes, before going to sleep, and the night outside was a mess of blinking lights, one of them sometimes flashing closer than the others in urgent red, blue, white. Caroline drifted towards the window almost instinctively, swearing between her teeth when she stubbed her toe on the leg of Hayley's bed. Hayley wasn't in it. Caroline wondered absently if she'd left for good.

The strap of her top had slid during the night; the window was cold against her naked shoulder. Not for the first time since she'd left Vermont, Caroline wished she hadn't stopped smoking. She could have done with the taste of acrid smoke of her tongue right about now, she thought, but she didn't have the strength of getting dressed and tip-toeing downstairs to buy a pack. There was a tint of rosy gold at the edge of the sky, probably a hole in the ozone layer or something —it reminded Caroline of the summers in Mystic Falls, when she would wake up after a party in someone's garden, hair damp with dew, the whole world smelling of stale booze and freshly-open flowers. It seemed so long ago, but it wasn't, was it? Tyler had given her his jacket, nuzzled her neck, kissed her, just a graze of lips. He'd been afraid to say he loved her at the beginning, and she remembered thinking it was ridiculous, because who would be afraid of something so mundane in a world where vampires and werewolves were real? She'd said that after their wedding and he had frowned, as if he couldn't remember not being a hundred percent confident of his love in her. It had made her happy, so happy. She'd thought, this is the end of all that. She should've known better. 

There was a weight on her chest, suffocating and almost-familiar, but for once Caroline didn't feel the need to cry. In fact, had she wanted to, she wasn't sure she could've. Not that anything was resolved, far from it: but for now she felt carefully numb, like something fragile protected by bubble wrap. Tomorrow she'd get Bonnie to call Jeremy; at least there were some advantages to this whole other side business, to knowing that dying was never really the end, not even the second time.

Her skin raised in goose-pimples when a hand touched the bare skin at her hip, but she didn't startle. 

"Elena," she whispered, without turning around. 

Elena set her chin on Caroline's shoulder. Her body, plastered against Caroline's back, was warm but not burning. 

"Care," she said softly. "Are you okay?"

Caroline shrugged. 

Elena gave a small, sleepy chuckle. "Sorry, stupid question."

Caroline thought she was going to say something else —Elena was like that, always trying to plug the holes, to fix the cracks with mortar— but she didn't. They stayed there for a while, as the city got progressively bluer and bluer, dragging their shadows into long, shapeless forms on the hotel carpet. It'd been a while since the last time she'd been to New York, Caroline realized, and she'd never really looked at the city, not like this; it felt strange and wide and unfamiliar, like a place in a movie.

"You remember when we said we'd go to New York together?" Elena asked after a while, threading her fingers at Caroline's belly. 

Caroline didn't. They'd said they'd do a lot of things together. Some of them they had; most of them they hadn't. There's nothing like the revelation that vampires exist to set your life off-track. "When?"

Elena shook her head slowly. "I don't know. A long time ago. I think it was before…"

"Okay," Caroline said, not to say, _I don't remember much of the before_. Sometimes she had trouble remembering some of the after, too, because there was always some apocalypse getting in the way and she had to redefine her boundaries: after the Salvatores came to town, after I died, after Elena died, after Klaus, after Tyler. "What did we say?"

"We said we'd be rockstars. Play every night in a different city. You know, with, like, raccoon make-up and wild parties and I'd marry Johnny Depp and you'd marry Brad Pitt… things like that."

That got a reaction out of Caroline; a small, punched-out laugh. "That's stupid. Brad Pitt already has a wife. I don't really measure up against Angelina, El."

Elena shrugged. Caroline could feel the stretch of her smile against the skin of her shoulder, like she was happy. "Nothing happens if you don't dream," she said in a sententious Disney presenter voice, and Caroline burst out laughing. 

She turned around, twisting in Elena's arms. With her back to the window, she pressed their foreheads together, looped her elbows around Elena's neck. "Well," she said, "here we are."

Elena's mouth twisted in a sad smile. It was a strange thing to see: when they were teenagers Caroline remembered being annoyed that Elena only had two settings, either that brilliant cheery grin or a disappointed frown. No nuances.

"You'll get through this," Elena whispered. Her eyes were shiny; the city lights crowned her with a toxic halo. "You're strong."

 _I have to,_ Caroline thought about retorting. It wasn't about strength, really, strength was another matter: this was survival, pure and simple. Of course she couldn't die just to accompany him: she was Caroline Forbes. It would have been out of character.

"I know," she said instead. Elena ducked her head and kissed her bare shoulder, and it was such a gentle, childlike thing to do, something that only Elena could've gotten away with, that Caroline couldn't remember how to breathe for a moment, didn't know what to do, press forward or thank her or pull away or scream—

"Am I interrupting?" a voice broke the silence. 

Caroline turned around, already rolling her eyes. Hayley was standing at the door with a greasy bag of take-out in her hand, the contour of her silhouette delineated by the stale corridor light. She looked almost genuinely curious, or maybe just uncomfortable that she'd stumbled onto something so obviously intimate.

"Hayley," Caroline said in greeting, at the same time as Elena said, "You're still here," in a cold annoyed voice so shockingly different from the soft murmur she'd been talking to Caroline in just a few seconds before that Caroline had to turn back to her to check it was really her talking.

"Food," Hayley said instead of taking the bait. She handed Caroline the bag and sat cross-legged on Elena's bed, toeing off her shoes in the process. She still looked smaller than she had in New Orleans, Caroline noticed —like the city was dwarfing her, making her into a regular human being for once. But maybe that was what she wanted. Caroline wouldn't have said no to being human again, if it meant getting Tyler back.

"Thanks," she said. Elena grabbed the bag off her hands and started taking out the containers. They settled one of the hotel trays on Elena's bed and sat in a loose triangle, Caroline sometimes reaching out to right the containers out of habit. Elena smiled at her over Hayley's head, as though to say, _nice to see you haven't changed, after all._

They ate in silence, Hayley with her shoulders slumped and in ravenous, hungry bites, Elena with prim fingers and Caroline almost mechanically. She wasn't hungry. She hadn't been hungry for days, except for those blood binges, whose sour taste still sat at the bottom of her stomach like a bad memory. She thought about starting up a conversation, but the only things to talk about were what they were planning to do, and she didn't really need to realize just how lost and unprepared they were. How was she even going to find Klaus? The city was so big, so messy and uncooperative. It would take days.

In the end it was Elena who jumped in, with her usual bullheaded bravery. "Do you even know where they are?" she asked Hayley.

Hayley shrugged. "I told you, they left. They didn't exactly leave a new address." She didn't add anything, wasn't one for pathos. Caroline tried to imagine the rest of the sentence: _the city was burning._

"How helpful," Elena bitched.

"I didn't come here to be your tour guide," Hayley snapped back.

"No, you just used us as your taxi to freedom, right?"

Caroline titled her head, annoyed. "Children." It was a strange recrimination in her mouth: when she was younger she was never the most mature, always the one that had to be called to order, corralled.

"I just have to find…" Hayley swallowed, "then I'll be out of your hair and you'll never hear from me again. Satisfied?"

"Very. And how long is that going to take?" Elena asked, a little less arch.

Hayley shrugged again. "I'll figure something out."

"You can stay with us a bit," said Caroline, and when Elena glared at her she pretended not to notice. The truth was —the truth was, she didn't particularly look forward to being alone with Elena all the time, discovering how much they really had grown apart under that pretense of being the same seventeen-year-olds they had been, arrogant and full of false bravado and tight, so tight.

"Thanks," Hayley said, without indicating whether or not she was accepting, and she went back to eating.

The conversation veered to Bonnie. Elena had her address, and she fired off a text to warn her they would be coming by in the afternoon. Caroline had never been to her flat but Elena remembered —vaguely; she hadn't been there in at least a year— a small, cosy thing at the top of a building with a narrow elevator, decorated in earth tones, with a long window and a vertiginous view. Caroline waited for her to mention Jeremy, but she didn't.

When their lunch was cleared and the tray wiped down, Hayley dug into her duffel bag for a leather jacket that she swung on her shoulders and waved them a lazy goodbye before disappearing again to God knows where. She didn't need them, and Caroline found herself a little that she could just dive into the city without apparent fear, offer herself to the indifferent flow. But searching for something was a powerful incentive. She hadn't thought about Tyler almost all morning, and when it came back it filled her veins with fire, the urge to find out why it'd happened, who'd done it. Maybe she didn't need to be envious after all. 

"We should go," she told Elena, already putting on her shoes.

"Now?"

"We don't have any time to lose. Once this is done, we can leave and really start looking for Tyler's—" the word stuck in her throat, _murderer_. Caroline swallowed. "You took the books, right?"

"Maybe Bonnie knows someone who can help us with them," Elena nodded. "Those symbols…"

"She has a coven, right? I mean," she paused a moment to think, "all witches have to have one?"

"If I remember correctly it's better to have your original one," Elena said, "but considering what happened… I don't know. When I came here she didn't want to talk about that." She didn't say, _me neither_ but Caroline heard it in her tone, the weariness that came from every hour of every day being occupied by trying to figure out the supernatural handbook. 

"Yeah, I get it," Caroline said. She did: for years there had been almost no mention of it in her and Tyler's house, just those days melting into nights when fangs and fur came out. But it felt organic, natural, in the forest behind their house, not like an infraction or something dangerous. Coming back to this constant doubt and insecurity was tiring.

Elena held out a hand. "Let's go, then," she said. When her eyes met Caroline's she realized that they were just as afraid, as tense and nervous and wound-up, so she took a breath and forced herself to smile.

The city was noisy, hot and loud. By the time they made it to the subway station they were sweaty and panting, and they remembered why they'd both chosen to live in the countryside. In the end Caroline always preferred her fantasies of big cities, skipping through crosswalks with her arms laden with shopping bags from expensive brands, shaking her perfectly expensive hairdo, to the real thing.

In the subway Caroline asked Elena about Stefan. "So what's going on with you two?"

Elena just shrugged. "He's been gone for a while, with Damon. Before that…" she screwed her face up, as though she couldn't remember, "he's good to me. He loves me." A beat. "And I love him. But it's… it's that endless repeating history, you know? Every time we do something it feels like we've done it before. When we fight. I'm not sure that's what eternity is supposed to feel like."

When they were teenagers Elena had never said the word, had never really acknowledged her own immortality, except when she had her humanity switched off; had continued to live her life as though she was just a teenager, a magnet for trouble with a vamp boyfriend and women who looked like her scattered through history.

"So what are you going to do?"

Elena gave her a tight smile. "As much as I hate to admit it, maybe Hayley's got the right idea. Maybe I'll just… not go back."

Caroline's first instinct was to scoff, say, _that's stupid, why would you say that?_ In her head Elena and Mystic Falls were still intrinsically linked, still meant the same things. 

"Really?"

Elena laughed. "No, probably not. Who knows how this," she gestured between the two of them, hand moving in the tight hot space between their bodies—the man behind her gave her a dirty look that she didn't see, "will end, anyway."

Caroline didn't say anything, and Elena gave her a look, a slight smile. "I know you think Stefan and I should be together," she said, and Caroline's head snapped up, surprised, before she remembered that she had been so adamant that they were made for each other a long time ago, "but it's never that simple."

"I don't… I mean, if the alternative is Damon, yeah, definitely," Caroline said. Elena laughed, and for a second Caroline felt incandescently angry, considered confronting her about it —but it wasn't the time or the place and she was tired, so tired. "You should do what makes you happy. Who cares about boys?"

The train swerved and Elena, who hadn't been expecting it, even with her superhuman instincts, fell forward into Caroline's arms, Caroline's back hitting the metallic doors. Being in the metro was an onslaught of sensations in itself —smells, tidbits of conversation, microscopic perceptions— but this was almost too much: Elena soft and pliable in her arms, her breath harsh, and that anticipated taste, soft and sweet and earthly and _real_ , the best friend Caroline had lost at some unspecified time between one end of the world and the next. She breathed deep, tears choked in her throat.

"Sorry," Elena said when she righted herself, pushing her hair back behind her ear. Caroline wondered what she thought about all this. It was strange, for a girl like Elena, to be this opaque, this mysterious, but she always had been, since the beginning. Caroline couldn't help but think it was something that coursed through the doppelganger blood, that almost regal ability to face anything and come out without a scratch, hair unruffled. Her only breakdowns had to be spectacular, to the tune of fire and switches —there was no in-between.

And to be near her again was —strange. Because she had changed, who wouldn't have, after seven years: but Caroline couldn't help but see, superimposed over her silhouette, the glowing outline of all the Elenas she had been, the bitchy perfect Elena of the beginning of high school, whom Caroline used to hate out of a perverse sense of duty; the kind, gentle Elena who had helped her through heartbreak after her —many— break-ups with Tyler; the manipulative Elena who couldn't stop playing games, with Katherine and Damon and all of them; the Elena of Stefan-and-Elena, almost otherworldly before she was even truly supernatural, preoccupied and childlike and so happy; the cold Elena after she had turned off her humanity, startlingly similar to Katherine but with still, inside of her, something aching and _honest_ when she looked back on herself as though she were someone entirely different and scorned her past naivety. All those Elenas, and the millions of others, seemed now like faulty tracing paper, the edges not quite coinciding to who Elena had become, what was, for all intents and purposes, the _real_ her —and it was a heartache wrapped in another heartache to realize that Caroline hadn't seen the transition, how she had grown into present day-Elena, and that there was something infinitesimal and precious that she would never understand about her, even if they stayed together forever.

"I love you," she said suddenly, unprompted, because it was burning in her gut. 

Elena looked up, surprised —then her face morphed into that expression that meant she thought it was a reaction to grief, Caroline trying to put her affairs in order just in case, and maybe she was right, Caroline didn't mind. As long as she said it.

"I love you too," Elena said simply. The man behind her looked like he didn't know whether he ought to be disgusted or mollified. Caroline smiled winningly in his direction just to screw with his head. 

Bonnie lived at the very top of a building in Manhattan, not exactly fancy but not miserable either. The whole transition —the part Caroline was present for, anyway— had been a little weird: she had had to tell Abby she was back, and when she told the story she got that awful faraway look, because it wasn't and would never be a happy relationship, because Abby was the only parent she had left but for all her powers of forgiveness, Bonnie still couldn't forget that she'd abandoned her. So she had moved to the city, gotten a new name, completed university and now she had a job, like she was almost normal. When she phoned and Caroline asked she said that Abby visited sometimes, and Caroline couldn't help but think about being a mother and knowing you would outlive your child, imagine the two of them sitting at a table with nothing to say to each other. 

Still —at her core, Bonnie was a happy, positive person, and in the grand scheme of things she was maybe dealing with it better than all of them. When they finally made it to her apartment building, its windows glittering in the brilliant afternoon sun, she answered the intercom in a cheery voice, opened the door for them and told them to come up. "I missed you," her tinny and distorted voice said just before the metallic click, and Caroline felt warmth surround her.

The floor of the elevator dipped a little when they stepped in, but Caroline swallowed back the ridiculous fear and only closed her eyes a little while it carried them to the fifteenth floor. When she opened her eyes Bonnie was in front of her, and Caroline hadn't expected the surge of affection she felt then, even though they'd seen each other not a week ago. Maybe she shouldn't have left at all.

Being newly-widowed gave her priority rights on all and any hugs, so Caroline let herself melt in Bonnie's slim, strong arms, clinging needily onto her shoulders. Bonnie hugged back just as energetically. 

"Do I really look that bad?" Caroline asked when she pulled back. It was meant to be teasing, but she still pushed her hair back self-consciously. 

"Yeah," Bonnie and Elena said at the same time, then flinched and laughed. 

Caroline decided she didn't care. What she cared about was that they were together again, the Three Stooges, and even if it was for the worst possible reason, even if Tyler should've been with them somewhere in the background… it was okay. It would be okay, eventually. It was better than being alone —so much better.

"Well," she said, pushing her shoulders back, "you'll just have to deal."

Bonnie led them inside and Caroline made all the appropriate oohs and aahs about the place. It probably wasn't required given the circumstances but she wanted to, and it took her mind off the inevitable —besides, the place deserved it. It was small but Bonnie had somehow managed to make it seem wide and inviting, open with light nestling in every corner. For a second while she was standing in the middle of the living-room, basking in dusty light that would undoubtedly have been stuffingly hot had the A/C not been cranked up to eleven, it seemed to Caroline like she was physically incapable to be unhappy.

She looked at Bonnie with heavy-lidded eyes. "It's a nice place," she said. "Very House and Home."

Bonnie laughed. "Shut up."

Then Elena took Stefan's books out of her bag, and the moment was broken. "We brought these," she said, all business-like, setting them on Bonnie's low table. "We thought you might know someone…"

"Magical?"

"Well, someone who can read Quechua, if that even is Quechua."

"I think it is, though," Caroline chimed in. "If that means anything."

"I don't—" Bonnie said, then stopped. "I really want to help you," she said, looking Caroline in the eye. Caroline smiled, trying to look encouraging rather than desperate. What she wanted was to take Bonnie's hand and tell her, I want to kill whoever did this. I want to sink my fangs into them so deep that they won't be able to identify the remains. I want to take revenge until I have nothing left, until I am empty from all that guilt and sadness and despair. Please help me. But she couldn't say that, could she?

Bonnie seemed to deflate all of a sudden. She sat down on one of the low chairs, gestured at them to sit down too. They did, automatically more than out of any sort of conscious thought process, and they watched silently as Bonnie undid her ponytail and breathed, shielded by the wavy brown curtain of her hair, before she tied it up again. 

"Do you want something to drink?" she asked. "I've got —tea, coffee, and wine, though I guess it's a little early in the afternoon for alcohol, right?" She gave a meager, aimless smile.

"I'll have coffee," Caroline said. "Do you want help making it?"

"Sure."

Elena elected to stay in the living-room, the books already open and spread on the table. Caroline wondered if she thought she could teach herself Quechua by will alone —this being Elena she probably had some plan none of them had thought of yet. Caroline followed Bonnie into the small, colorful kitchen, whistling when Bonnie handed her a bright red French press. 

"Fancy," she teased. Bonnie stopped pouring Elena's grapefruit juice to roll her eyes at her. 

They were silent while the coffee brewed. Bonnie poured herself a glass of water with too many ice cubes and proceeded to drink calmly, her back pressed against the wall. Above her head, at the left of the sink, was a minuscule window which let a tight stream of light enter the kitchen, almost like a spear.

It was probably what inspired Caroline to ask, thoughtlessly, "What's it like, being the anchor?" She froze as soon as she'd said it, willing herself to take it back. 

Bonnie didn't seem to particularly mind, though. Her face did darken a little but she kept sipping her water, as though she was really thinking about it. "It's… strange," she decided on eventually. "You know, when I left Mystic Falls I wanted all that shit to be over, like you. I wanted to put it all behind me and start a new life. I thought New York meant that— there are so many people here, nobody knows me, I thought I could make myself into whoever I wanted and nobody would notice. And I was right, in a way." She took a gulp of water. "But you can't stop being a witch. It's…" she darted a look towards Caroline, "it's not like being a vamp, obviously, but you can't just leave it in a corner and forget it either. My grandmother, even my mom… I didn't know but they were preparing me for it, all my life. All those old books I found boring and crazy. It's—I was meant to be this from the start."

"But the anchor—" said Caroline.

"Yeah, it's something else." She didn't say anything else for a moment, like that was all the description it needed. But, "I never thought there were that many on earth," she said then. She laughed. "It's a stupid thing to say, of course I knew, the way everyone knows, in a kind of abstract way; but I never really understood what it _meant_ , six billion people. With what, five percent supernatural, maybe ten? It's hard to ignore it, the fact that people die, when you can feel it passing through you every time." She took another sip of water. "I got used to it with time. It's been years. Sometimes I feel like it's weighing me down, like it's all I can ever be, a door for people who don't even know I'm there, who are too scared or tired or angry to even care. Sometimes I forget about it."

Caroline nodded. She didn't know what else to do. She'd asked, though, hadn't she? Now she had her answer, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

"What about him?" she asked, when she couldn't keep quiet anymore. 

"Who?"

"Tyler."

Bonnie looked vaguely guilty for a second. "Oh. Of course. What do you want to know?"

"Did you… feel him? When he died?"

"I…" The coffee started bubbling in the press. Bonnie didn't move to turn off the gas, so Caroline did. For a second she considering closing her hand on the searing hot metal, to wake herself up. "No. It's not like that," Bonnie said. "It doesn't work like that. I can't always tell."

"But it's _Tyler_ ," Caroline insisted, her voice rising to a plea. "You knew him. You've known him since we were kids!"

Tyler was such an insufferable kid, Caroline recalled. She wasn't a prize either, but God, she remembered hating him so much, with his perfectly white sneakers and his superior little frown, the way he would always beat everyone at sports, the way he laughed, all big white teeth and curled lips… But maybe that was just the way it seemed now. When they'd left Tyler hadn't taken a lot from the Lockwood estate, because he said it held more bad memories than good in the end, but one of the things he had wanted to keep was an old scrapbook. They'd looked at the photos one night when it was raining outside, thunder making the windows shake, snuggled on the couch with ball glasses of red wine, laughing. It had seemed like such a mundane, normal thing. 

"Sometimes they just… pass, Caroline. I can't always tell. If I could I'd have…" she let her sentence trail off, and Caroline wanted to shake her, demand that she explain. What? What could she have done? Bonnie said, "You remember when you arrived in Mystic Falls last week? I didn't know."

Caroline felt like she was crumpling, her whole body a scrap of paper in the hand of a giant. "But you could —you could call him, right? We did that before."

Bonnie hesitated. "Maybe. I'd need people to help me. And a medium."

"Jeremy," she ignored Bonnie's small tremor at the name—this just wasn't the time, "he still lives here, right?"

Caroline saw _how would I know?_ hover on Bonnie's lips, but she took one look at Caroline and said, "Yeah."

"Can you call him?"

"Caroline, this is —Tyler will still be dead, you know. When you talk to him."

Caroline shook her head violently. Her hair flew in her face and stuck to her eyelashes. It was only when a tear fell on her hands that she realized she was crying. Shit. "I know that," she said. Her voice was trembling. Shit, fuck. Why couldn't she ever control herself? This wasn't—

A hand at the small of her back. "Care," Elena said, her voice so soft and gentle Caroline wanted to turn around and scratch her face off. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Caroline said through the tears. "We're just talking."

"About what?"

Caroline opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Eventually Bonnie said, "Caroline wanted to… see if Tyler was still around. In ghost form."

"I know he is," Caroline said, in as steady a voice as she could. "I can feel him. I just want to talk to him."

"Why?" Elena asked, and for a moment Caroline wanted to slap her, ask her, wouldn't you want to talk to your parents if you could, to all the people who died for you? "It's just going to—" _hurt_ , was the word Elena didn't say. It's just going to hurt more.

"Maybe he knows…" Caroline swallowed, "maybe he knows who killed him. He can help us avenge him. He'll tell us where to find the tribe."

 _I want to talk to him. I want to say I'm sorry._ She kept it between her teeth.

"Can you do that?" Elena asked Bonnie. "Call him, I mean? Or summon him, I don't know?"

Bonnie bit her lip. "Not on my own. I'd need a coven, the help of the ancestors."

"Didn't you say you had people here?"

Bonnie didn't answer. She poured the coffee in two mugs and handed Caroline one. Elena took a sip of her juice and sighed. Caroline noticed the light from the little window was hitting her right in the chest, like a beam speared through her body. The Passion of Saint Elena.

"We don't always get along," Bonnie said after drinking. "I'd have to ask."

Caroline drank too, just to feel it burn down her throat. "How long is that going to take? We…"

"I don't know. If they don't want to be found I won't find them. They're not like the Mystic Falls witches. They help if they think they can get something out of it. When I came here at first they wouldn't even talk to me. I had to tell them about the Other Side."

"Look," Caroline said, agitated now, "I know you don't want to talk to Jeremy—" Elena opened her mouth to deny it, then realized it wasn't about her, or not just about her, "but wouldn't it be easier? I know Tyler's there, somewhere around me. Jeremy can just tell me what he's saying."

Something seized on Elena's face. "You didn't tell me," she said.

"What?"

"That you felt him."

"There are ghosts everywhere," Caroline said, but when she looked into Elena's face she realized she didn't understand. What she meant was: there are ghosts everywhere, and vampires and werewolves and witches, but we don't talk about it, do we? We just know.

"Well," she said, to close the discussion, "I do. And I think we should call Jeremy. If you just give me his number," she told Bonnie, "I'll go talk to him alone. If you really don't want to see him." She didn't look at Elena when she said that. Elena had never said —not to her, at least— that she wasn't talking to Jeremy anymore. They'd all understood, but it was implied, a secret lying under the skin. If Elena didn't talk about it it meant either that she was embarrassed, unsure or she didn't know how to explain —in any case, it was better to leave it alone. There were some questions Caroline wouldn't have wanted to answer either.

There was a silence.

"I don't have his number," Bonnie said after a while, like a concession. "He just comes around sometimes… if I'm here I buzz him up I do, we spend some time together." She didn't specify what 'spending time together' meant, and they didn't ask. "That's all."

"Don't you have any way to contact him?" At any other time Caroline would have been ashamed to sound so desperate, but loss was ringing in her head like a big gong, high and low at the same time, and she couldn't think. "Do you know some of his friends, or where he lives?"

Bonnie gave her a worried look. "Caroline…"

Elena joined in, "You should sit down," she said. She moved a little to the left and the beam of light transferred from her chest to the open air, where it dissolved. Caroline felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. 

"Just tell me," she said, but she let them guide her to the living-room and sit her on the couch, her mug in front of her on the table, in a nest of papers. It looked like Elena had maybe found something while she and Bonnie were talking. 

"I can do a locating spell," Bonnie said. "I have some of his stuff. He leaves things everywhere." She glanced at Elena when she said the last part, to have it confirmed or maybe to apologize for knowing that kind of detail about Jeremy. Which was stupid, Caroline thought; they'd all known him since they were kids. Caroline remembered his room in Elena's parents' house, the way it always looked like there had been a storm, books with broken spines and messy clothes and homework in stacks of flying paper. He used to be rebellious in a quiet, repressed way, always brewing with anger. After the initial shock it had made sense that he would be a hunter, someone whose blood was genetically —magically— designed to boil.

"Do it," Caroline said.

"Now?"

Elena bit her lip. "We should wait," she said, and Caroline couldn't determine if it was because she was afraid of seeing Jeremy and because she thought Caroline would crumble under the weight of grief again.

"I'm not made of glass, Elena." It came out a little snappy, but saying it felt good, like releasing pressure from a cooker. "I won't break. I can take it. I just want to talk to him."

"You can't even know he's here for sure," Elena said.

"I know."

"She's right," Bonnie said, but it was difficult to determine who it was intended for. Elena took it for herself, of course.

There was more silence, and the sun was at window level and was a great big ball of fire filling every corner of the visible horizon, overwhelming. Bonnie blinked a few times. She looked thinner, Caroline noticed; not thinner than she was usually these days but thinner than she had been when they were in high school. She used to have good cheeks and nice, slim but substantial hips; now she was razor-sharp, her eyes a little sunken. Caroline felt bad for being so insistent, tried to imagine what it felt like to have one foot in an undetermined dimension filled with the ghosts of vampires and werewolves and who the fuck knew what kind of other creatures, and couldn't.

"I think I've got a bracelet of his," Bonnie said. "I'll go get it."

"Thanks," Caroline said, nodded and slumped on the couch, feeling drained all of a sudden. Elena followed Bonnie out of the room. Caroline heard them whispering in the narrow corridor, heard Elena saying, _what if he isn't there?_ Bonnie didn't answer.

"I love you," Caroline said to the empty room, because she wasn't sure she would be able to say it to Tyler's face, even though he wouldn't be flesh and blood. She didn't expect the ghost to answer, but it still hurt when he didn't.

Bonnie came back and arranged the ingredients for the spell. She seemed less sure than she had when she did this all the time, and Caroline wondered how much this would draw on her own energy without a coven or ancestors to lend her power. She took Bonnie's hand over the table, interrupting her mid-movement. 

"Thank you for doing this," she said. "I…" _missed you_ , but they had never really been apart, had they? Except they had.

Bonnie nodded, her smile wide and generous. At least that hadn't changed. Caroline felt richer just for seeing it, like she had every time Bonnie had smiled at her since they were kids. She would be nothing without these girls.

When she started doing the spell Bonnie closed her eyes and color drained from her face. It didn't take very long; sand moved on the map until it stopped not far from Bonnie's apartment, at the blunt, dead end of a street, and stayed there, unmoving. Some form of recognition dawned on Bonnie's face, but she didn't say anything. She stopped the spell, clapped her hands to get the sand off her fingers. 

"Okay," she said, standing up. "It won't take long. You can wait here. It's better that—" She didn't finish. 

Elena looked like she was thinking of arguing, but didn't. So it was just the two of them again, once Bonnie had donned sunglasses and slipped out the door, the two of them in Bonnie's red and brown apartment with the giant sun blotting the view and tear tracks on Caroline's cheeks and that old bracelet of Jeremy's on the table, tarnished gold shaped like a wolf's mouth. Caroline's eyes fell on her coffee mug and she realized she hadn't drunk more than that first sip of it. It was probably cold now anyway.

Elena touched her hand. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah," Caroline said. She resisted the urge to tear her hand away. Elena was only trying to help. Sometimes she knew how, and sometimes she didn't. Now that feeling of being sisters was mixed in with the feeling of not knowing each other very well, and it was strange, off-putting, like the ground was uneven and you couldn't be sure when you were going to step into a porthole. Elena used to never miss the mark when she really cared, but she was still talking to the old Caroline, the one with fruity lipgloss and long teeth she wasn't sure what to do with.

"How can you be—" Elena hesitated, but continued, "how can you be sure he's here?"

 _I'm not_ , Caroline thought, but saying it would make the fear real and she knew it would rear up in front of her and hurt her. So she said, "I just know, Elena. When you love someone… it's like there's a part of them that's hooked into your flesh, and it acts like a compass."

Elena nodded. "I get tired of it, though," she said. "Death never being definite. How are you supposed to mourn people if you're never really sure they're gone? How are you supposed to get any peace —or them?"

Caroline frowned. She'd never really thought of it like that, she realized.

"Your parents have peace," she said, taking a wild guess at what she thought Elena was thinking about. The subject came up at the most random times, but for Elena it always came back to that. Caroline knew she counted the years from that day, like it was her own personal birth of Jesus.

(Besides, came to her the afterthought, 'parents' encompassed a lot of people: Alaric and Jenna and even Isobel and John, all the people Elena had found and immediately lost, as though touching her—)

"Maybe," Elena said. "Maybe not. I mean, who's to say it's not the same thing with humans? Maybe we just don't know, we can't know. But if there's another side for us, why wouldn't there be one for them? And even a heaven and a hell, all that. There being a God doesn't seem that far-fetched anymore when you know everything that's running amok in the world."

"I guess," Caroline said, a little hesitant now. "Don't you think your parents would be in heaven, though?"

Elena shook her head. She looked angry, and Caroline regretted having started the conversation. She felt sick to her stomach, too, because that idea was so grim and pessimistic and unlike Elena, and because it was too easy to imagine Elena torturing herself with it, shut in the thick darkness of the Salvatore house. "Why?" she bit. "It's so arbitrary. It's not like the Other Side was created for any real reason, right, except to trap someone, and the rest of them, of us, they just end up trapped one way or another, when they die. You heard Bonnie when she found out. Some of them make it to the beyond, but they don't know how, maybe it's just an escape… not even that they're better. Don't you think that if there were a way out for the good ones Bonnie wouldn't have lingered? She deserved all the peace. But she didn't see the light, or whatever they call it."

There was a silence, then Caroline asked, "Did you ever ask her how it felt? To be a ghost, I mean?"

"I think she still is, in a way."

"You mean, because she's always half on the other side, or…"

"I just think a part of her never came back. What she believed in. She didn't tell me how it was like, but afterwards she told me it hurt. To always have people passing through her. She told me you can't ever stay yourself when you're the anchor, because there are moments you become everything, everyone at once…"

Caroline shuddered. "It sounds horrible."

"It's what it is," said Elena. "Didn't you find being a vampire horrible at the beginning too?"

 _Not really_ , Caroline thought. Thankfully Elena didn't seem to be waiting for an answer.

"Anyway," Elena said, but then she didn't continue and she was staring into nothing. She looked exhausted, very unlike herself in the hot sun, with her clean hair and clean young face on which hundreds of centuries worth of pain and tiredness had dropped which weren't there the second before. "God," she said, not seeming to realize how ironic it was of her to invoke that divinity whose existence she found so arbitrary and random, "I wish I smoked."

"Maybe I have—" Caroline started, even though she knew she didn't. She only ever stole cigarettes from people; that way it was easy to convince herself she really had quit.

"It's fine," Elena said. "I don't really want it. Just something to occupy my hands." She looked down at them and saw something she didn't like. Maybe they were trembling. Seeing her in pain like that, a pain Caroline couldn't assuage, suddenly reminded her she had been a good friend of Tyler's, too. For a while in high school, before the whole vampire thing, Caroline had even thought he had a crush on her and had told Elena to go for it. Maybe if she had none of this would've happened.

There was a silence and Caroline thought, this is my slot: this is where I should talk, say that her parents are in heaven, say that God exists and is benevolent and loves us and we'll be happy eventually, forever. But Elena was the optimist, and Caroline had just lost Tyler. There wasn't a drop of optimism left in her, only rage and what hung back, the crazy desperation of what would be left when that rage was spent, lacerated on someone's chest the same way they had lacerated Tyler's. This was what terrified her. So there was no room left for optimism: only rage, desperation, and fear.

"I'm sorry," she told Elena. She meant, I'm sorry this is the best I can do.

Elena looked her in the eye. "It's okay." She took in a breath. "I miss him too, you know."

Caroline tried to find a way to say, sorry we left you behind. It hadn't felt like it at the time, had felt like they were barely making it out alive; but maybe that was what it had been. "I thought he had a crush on you in high school," Caroline said idly, to say something.

"Tyler?" Caroline nodded, smiling slightly from the corner of her mouth. "Really? Why?"

"I don't know. He was always staring at you. Everyone was always staring at you. You were…" _beautiful_ , she meant to say, but Elena was still beautiful, more beautiful even, if you looked at her right. "Everyone loved you."

Elena laughed. "Yeah, that's why I spent most of my high school career trying to avoid getting killed."

"That's how vampires show their affection. Don't you know that by now?"

She was joking, except she wasn't; when she thought about it these days she couldn't even be mad at Katherine for killing her anymore. It had been strangely merciful: a pillow and that sweet last exhale while she had still been sleeping, then waking up —scared, yes; terrified —but in a hospital where it was easy to find blood, not in a grave forced to dig her way out, not cut open on a cold morgue slab. And her life since had been… not easier, really, but she couldn't imagine it differently, without the rush, without the way everything always felt alive around her, her perceptions increased and sharp sometimes to the point of hurting. Sometimes she tried to imagine loving someone whose beating heart she couldn't hear quieten before they went to sleep and felt hollow.

"You know," Elena said, "we almost kissed once."

"Who?"

"Tyler and me." To Caroline's arched eyebrow, she reassured, "Almost. It was before you were together, we were drunk, it was at that party… I don't know. Maybe you're right, maybe he did have a crush on me."

"He did."

"He married you, though."

"And look where that got him."

There was no laughter in Elena's eyes when her head snapped up. Caroline thought, I wish she could let this go. "Caroline—"

"I know, it wasn't my fault. But—" she stood up and started pacing, only realizing it when she was in the middle of the room, standing in the pool of sunlight, "he's dead, Elena. And I can't do anything about it, and I can't help but think that every tragedy in his life was because of me. Klaus being after him. The hybrid debacle. His mother's—"

"None of that had to do with you," Elena said. "It had to do with Klaus being an asshole and… look, you can't think like this. He loved you." She swallowed. "He loves you, still, wherever he is now. It was always you and him."

It was never me and him, Caroline thought, even as she let herself be hugged by Elena, swallowed in her embrace with the sun dripping on her back. We fell together by chance. And now he's dead.

"He wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself," said Elena. Caroline wanted to scream, how do you know? How do you know what he was like? You weren't the one who lived with him for years, and loved him, and didn't love him, and had to watch as they loaded his body into a truck, and had to look at his torn-out heart. You don't know how selfish he was, and cruel and violent, like you, like me.

She burrowed her head in Elena's neck. "Maybe he'll tell us," she said, very softly. If Elena heard she didn't show any sign of it.

—

There was a knock at the door. Caroline couldn't understand why they Bonnie was knocking on the door of her own apartment. She got it when she looked back at Elena, bent over the books and studying them with more focus than they probably required: Bonnie was pacing herself, trying to make this as painless as possible for everyone. It would hurt anyway. This was the way things were now: it was more about cushioning the fall than trying to avoid falling altogether, since that was already inevitable.

"I'll get it," she said. Elena nodded without looking up.

Truth was, Caroline didn't know what to think of Jeremy: nice enough —always a boy, because he was Elena's little brother— but more trouble than he was worth in the end, for Elena, for Bonnie, for all of them. And there had always been something vaguely off about him since the death of their parents and then, after that, since he'd found out about his hunter status: the knowledge that there was violence coiled right under his skin, only waiting for a moment of inattention to leap at them and attack. Hunters rarely missed, Caroline knew that, but it was hard to make coincide with that dark-haired boy with traces of baby fat on his cheeks, the rebellious frown he used to serve Elena when she forced him to go to school.

She opened the door, and Jeremy was standing there, Bonnie at his side. Caroline noticed her fingers were ringing his wrist, as though to hold him back. For a second, irrationally, Caroline thought about shutting the door in his face. It wasn't too late: she could still pretend she hadn't seen him and hope Elena hadn't seen the too-familiar outline of his body, the puppy eyes, the adolescent slump of his shoulders even though he was, what, twenty-three now? But they weren't running away from things, not anymore. Besides, she needed him; she was the one who'd asked for him, after all.

"Hi," she said, dipping in quickly to hug Bonnie. "Thanks for doing this."

Jeremy nodded and smiled, not to her but to someone behind her, maybe Elena and maybe somebody else, floating in the air between their bodies. Is it crowded with ghosts? Caroline wanted to ask.

Elena came closer: Caroline could feel the tension radiating off her body, a skittering in her pulse. She opened her arms. Jeremy didn't even hesitate before he stepped into her embrace; they sighed, worryingly in-sync after all this time. Elena's hand fit at the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in too-long, slightly greasy hair.

"Hey," she said, so softly Caroline wasn't sure she was supposed to hear. She couldn't really help it, though. "Missed you."

There was a beat; Jeremy's hands pressed too hard against Elena's shoulder-blades, in a bruising way that would have hurt had Elena been human. Caroline remembered him saying, eyes dark, trying not to look at Elena, I want to kill her every time she's near me. It was hard to not feel pity for them when they loved each other so much. We're everything to each other, Elena had said to Bonnie and her more than once, like it was just the way it was, a fatality; we don't have a choice. 

Everyone back in Mystic Falls had known that Jeremy and Elena were a little too close for siblings, a little too codependent. They had turned a blind eye because there were reasons, attenuating circumstances, their parents were dead and it had to be an orphan thing, didn't it, clinging to each other like the air between the two of them was being suckered away by an invisible force? 

Caroline had thought it would abate when Elena started dating but it hadn't, not really. For one thing Elena had dated like she'd been doing for her whole life, with the same elegant, smiling carelessness. It had seemed unfair to Caroline, who always cared so much about everything, the way Elena waded through the waters of relationships like she didn't even notice the turnovers, Matt fading into Stefan fading into Damon with only occasional tremors, a few pauses to take care of herself, shut off her humanity while she dealt with the wreckage of her burnt-down house. When Jeremy had moved to New York after the whole hunter debacle Caroline hadn't been able to help being relieved: it was almost as easy to picture him getting lost in the noisy bustle of the city and forgetting to call Elena every day until it didn't matter anymore as it was remembering the two of them hanging over each other at every town fair for sixteen unbroken years.

When they let go of each other Elena stumbled back a little. Jeremy put a hand on her arm to steady her and she smiled up at him, lightning-quick. Caroline felt like she was intruding, but—

"Can you see him?" she asked when she couldn't keep it in anymore.

Jeremy's eyes moved from his sister's face to her. "Bonnie told me you felt his presence. Is that true?"

"I think —yeah, I do. I know he's here."

"Not right now," said Jeremy matter-of-factly. Caroline tried not to let her face fall. "But they wander off sometimes. We can wait a little if you want."

His hands twitched at his sides. Caroline wondered if the urge to kill her was as strong as it was towards Elena or if blood ties just made things worse.

"Are you sure you can still… I mean—"

"Yeah," Jeremy said. After a moment, he elaborated, "Sometimes ghosts linger for a long time. When I go back to Mystic Falls I talk to Bonnie's gram."

Elena's head snapped up. "When did you—" she started, voice cold and betrayed.

"Just one day," Jeremy said, guilt flashing on his face. "It was a long time ago. I didn't… it wasn't a big thing."

"You couldn't even tell me?" Elena turned to Bonnie. "Did you know?"

Bonnie looked down, like this was everything she had hoped to avoid. "Look, he's right, it was nothing. He just didn't want to stir up trouble. You were busy anyway."

"Do you think he's going to come back?" Caroline asked.

"He can't have gone far," Jeremy said, sounding grateful for the interruption. Then: "What happened? I thought you moved to Vermont."

"We did. He—Tyler—apparently someone still had a bone against him. He was killed in the forest behind our house."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Caroline said. Maybe in time she'd learn to say thank you when people said that, but right now it just made bile rise in her throat. When Tyler came back he'd tell her it was okay.

"Can I help with anything?" Jeremy asked, and Caroline almost laughed, because she remembered him at thirteen, sullen and uncooperative, his head gelled in adorable spikes on his head. Hard to think he'd slept with Bonnie, too, and years ago at that. They were all so young still —it was easy to forget sometimes.

For some reason this brought her thoughts back to Klaus. There was no telling where he was at any given time, and being in such a gigantic city just made it harder to guess. Caroline had been intent on not following his tracks after the wedding, letting the outside world fade away: she had made her choice. Now it was coming back to bite her in the ass —figured.

They sat and waited. Bonnie stuck close to Jeremy's side, more out of habit, it seemed, than by any conscious decision; and Jeremy and Elena were staring at each other across the table like they were re-enacting Romeo and Juliet. Caroline's hands were itching in her lap; she wanted to put them around her mouth and shout-whisper to Tyler to come back, that it was rude to make people wait. Once she saw him she would— what would she say? Her heart thundered loudly. The others pretended not to notice.

They waited for hours. No one said anything, even when it started to become obvious that Tyler wouldn't come —wasn't there— wasn't— even when it became obvious that it wouldn't happen today. Jeremy didn't say he had somewhere else to go; he picked up one of the books and leafed through it, sometimes leaning over to Elena to whisper something to her, pointing to some symbol he recognized, though Caroline couldn't bring herself to care whether it was useful information or not. When he wanted Bonnie's attention he would touch her forearm with light fingertips, casually, like they were used to being around each other all the time. Or maybe they had picked up that dynamic back when they were dating and never really let go of it.

After a while of standing by the window and pretending not to panic Caroline slumped into the couch, toed off her heels, her body curled into a comma. She didn't let herself cry. Tyler will come, she told herself for the first five hours; then, as the others kept whispering out of respect for the dead, as if to trick them into coming closer, her hope started fraying at the seams and she focused on keeping awake, on not crumbling, not yelling.

To distract herself she started planning in her head the funeral they would have for Tyler once she and Elena came back from Peru. First Caroline would wipe the blood from her hands, lick the entrails from her fingers; then they would get to work. She doubted the coroner would surrender Tyler's body to her, if they even still had it, but in the end it didn't really matter. She would round up all their old friends, the people they had loved, and they would do it in the Mystic Falls woods —a concession, she thought, to how wrong they had been to believe you could ever get away, forget the place you were born. She would consecrate Tyler's soul under the thick-smelling pines, in the white mist, and then there would be a reception where they would tell stories of how wonderful he had been, how unjust his death— It was like a dream. In it Caroline wasn't sad, or angry, but pleasantly numb; she accepted everyone's condolences in her black dress and veil, like all the widows she had ever seen on TV, and there was no anger gnawing at her gut. Maybe she'd feel like this, once she—

"Maybe you could try," said Jeremy, spurring her from her reverie.

"What?"

They ignored her. Bonnie grimaced. "Maybe," she said. It was easy —too easy, Caroline thought; she could have concealed it better, for my sake— to see where she thought Tyler was: faded, disappeared, entirely gone, something to be given up on. But Caroline wasn't going to do that. He had to be somewhere. What was the point —what was the point of the Other Side if Tyler wasn't there?

"You know," Bonnie said hesitantly, to her this time, "they say that peace—"

"You'll try, right? You'll ask the other witches?"

Bonnie sighed. Elena bit her lip, probably to keep herself from making a comment. Caroline was grateful. "If you're sure," Bonnie relented.

"I am."

"Look, nothing guarantees they'll say yes. It doesn't—they don't do things just for friendship's sake, and if they did, the wouldn't do it for me. They don't know me very well, and they don't trust me, not to mention that you're not even from here—"

"They'll do it," Caroline said, meaning: they'll do it, or I'll hunt them down myself, break their necks and suck the marrow from their spines. "We'll make sure of it."

"Caroline, I'm not sure this is a good idea." Elena's eyebrows were furrowed: poor girl. It reminded Caroline of the Vermont policemen, sparing her tragedy a half-glance before moving along, walking away.

"Do you have anything else in mind?" Elena didn't say, you should just give up. She'd never been able to say things like that, hard things, things that hurt. "Thought so. We're doing it."

"Not tonight," Bonnie said, softly, a little chastising.

"No," Caroline agreed. "Not tonight. I need a bubble bath and a glass of wine." She let herself slump back into the couch. "Or like, a barrel of B positive."

There was a silence: not uncomfortable, but like a break in the atmosphere, an almost tangible moment where they stopped waiting. The tension in the room relaxed. If they had been a heartbeat, Caroline thought —and it was a funny thought, given that only two of them were technically alive, and that was being generous—, they would be comatose.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy said again. "Maybe he just stayed behind."

"Behind? Where?"

"Where he was killed."

"Why would he do that?" Why wouldn't he follow me?

Jeremy shrugged, and Caroline thought it must be hard to live surrounded by ghosts—he must understand more than he should, and not understand even more. "I think it's linked, or something. Some of them have—beefs. With the past. Things to care of, you know."

"I'm trying to find out what happened," Caroline said, then amended, "We're trying."

"I know, but maybe Tyler doesn't. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's not that. Maybe he just doesn't want me to see him. I don't think he liked me all that much."

"He liked you," Caroline said automatically, though Jeremy wasn't wrong: Tyler had considered him like a little brother for a while, but after they'd found out Jeremy was a hunter there had been a distance, Tyler's instinctive wariness kicking in. Tyler liked to see the world in black and white. Sometimes it had infuriated Caroline, and they'd fought about it, but it always came back to—

"Do you wanna go back?" Elena asked, setting a hand at the small of Caroline's back. It was a strangely intimate touch for people who hadn't seen each other in —well, years, but Caroline understood: this week had been like an accelerated crash course in life, every tragedy of existence crammed into those small 24-hour days. Maybe that was why she felt so exhausted all the time.

"Don't you want to—" catch up, she meant. "I can go back on my own. Maybe Hayley's at the hotel."

Elena curled her lip, her instinctual reaction whenever Hayley was mentioned; at the same time there was something like a glimmer of guilt in her eye. "About that," she said.

"What?"

"Wait," Bonnie said, "Hayley's still with you?"

Caroline remembered calling Bonnie from the road and mentioning the wolf in the backseat of Elena's car, Bonnie's bewilderment and polite disapproval. In fact, every time someone disapproved of their traveling together Caroline found herself liking Hayley more and more. Maybe it was just to spite the world, she reflected —but maybe it was for another reason, because Hayley was going from place to place and always unwelcome, always fighting, always making her way despite everyone. Caroline couldn't help but admire her a little.

She shrugged. "I told her she could stay with us until she found what she was looking for," she said. "She didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Some organizational skills," Elena mumbled, as though she hadn't up and quit her entire life to follow Caroline into what would most likely end up being a wild goose chase.

"What is she looking for?" Bonnie asked. 

"Elijah. I think."

Jeremy's eyebrows shot up. He looked so much like Elena in that instant that it physically hurt, and Caroline had to turn away so she could breathe without his eyes on her for a second.

"What does she want with Elijah? I thought you said Klaus was in the city. Aren't the other Originals with him?"

Caroline considered telling her that they knew about as little as she did, but before she could Elena said, "She didn't tell us exactly what happened, but apparently they left her in New Orleans for some reason. Elijah seems to be here though, somewhere, or at least that's what Hayley thinks. She almost made us run over two members of her pack leaving, that's how eager she was."

"You must have heard about Klaus," Caroline told Bonnie, regretting that she was only thinking about this so late, "from the witches. There's no way he's been in town and not brokered some sort of deal with them."

"Or more likely some intimidation tactic," Elena couldn't help but contribute.

"I don't listen to gossip," Bonnie said. Caroline arched an eyebrow and she flushed a little, said, "I mean, they don't trust me enough with their business, and even if they did, I'm not interested. I've dealt with this enough when I was in Mystic Falls."

"We're living our own lives now," Jeremy said. Hearing him say 'we' felt out of place, unwelcome, but no one called him on it.

"Besides, even if I wanted their information, I think they know what happened with Klaus back in the day, with the hybrids and all that. It doesn't look great from the outside. They won't purposefully antagonize me because they're afraid of me, but I don't think they're going to offer me friendship bracelets any time soon."

"Makes sense," said Elena. Jeremy nodded and caught his own bracelet between two fingers. Helpless, Caroline watched as he communicated silently with Bonnie, raising an eyebrow to which she responded with a light smile, a peculiar sort of choreography Caroline didn't want any part of yet couldn't help but watch. Elena didn't seem to notice, though she probably did.

"I thought we could track her," she said. 

"Who?"

"Hayley."

Caroline stared. "Why would we track Hayley? And how?"

To Caroline's amazement, Elena produced one of the charms Caroline had seen dangling from the handle of Hayley's bag in the hotel. It was small enough not to be missed in the tangle, a little silver thing with a half-moon dangling from it. Caroline stared some more.

Elena didn't even pretend to be sheepish. "I thought we could ask Bonnie to… you know. Look," she said when it became obvious Caroline needed some convincing, "she must have some leads if she's searching for Elijah, and it's not like she's going to share. Once she finds him he'll lead us straight to Klaus. You're the one who said the faster we took care of this the faster we could avenge Tyler."

Caroline bit her lip not to say she was the one who would take care of the revenge part. Elena was helping her, after all; had followed her, without asking for anything in return, not even an explanation.

"Not today," was all she said in the end; she couldn't take another disappointment. Elena looked ready to argue, but eventually she just stuffed the charm back in her pocket, content with her victory for once.

Caroline thought they would leave after that, but Bonnie persuaded them to stay for dinner —or rather, pizza, since they were all too lazy and wrung-out to cook. There was an uncomfortable moment when Jeremy realized he didn't have anything to do here anymore and extracted himself from their circle, all long limbs and toned, tense forearms he used to push himself up. He seemed choked-up in front of Elena —after their first embrace they hadn't talked much, just a few stray whispers here and there when they forgot themselves and glances when they thought the other wasn't looking. Eventually he dipped down, fast as quicksilver, and bracketed her head with one arm, her hair bunching up at the nape of her neck. From where Caroline was sitting it looked like desperation and the sort of love that can only exist between siblings, people who know each other too well and not at all at the same time, who spend their lives missing essential facets of each other.

"Our hotel—" Elena said when he released her and her hands slid from the small of his back, rattling off the address. He listened intently but didn't write it down. 

"I'll see you," he told Caroline, after he had hugged Bonnie and pressed a kiss to her hair. He was reverent with her; that Caroline could accept. He gave her an awkward half-hug. "Sorry again. Tyler was a good person."

"Yeah," Caroline said.

He picked up the messenger bag that he'd left against the foot of the table and left the apartment without fanfare, polite and unobtrusive in a way it hadn't occurred to Caroline that he could be. She tried to picture him outside in the golden-lit New York streets and realized that she hadn't even asked what he was doing here, if he was working, studying, something. Maybe he'd found other hunters. 

"Let's drink," said Bonnie, and Caroline forgot all about Jeremy Gilbert.

They made margaritas to go with the pizza; by the time it got there they were already thoroughly tipsy, salt like little broken diamonds everywhere, between their fingers and on the damp skin of their wrists because they'd decided halfway through that it was a good idea to try to do them like shots while they were at it. In Caroline's mouth was the flavor of crushed ice and mint, sparkling water with the sour aftertaste of tequila, the remembrance of Elena's thick, creamy blood when she'd dared take a sip, thinking it was oh so funny and looking at Bonnie all the while to see if she'd notice. Elena had liked it, too. Afterwards she had held her wrist like touching Caroline's lips had turned it to porcelain.

The pizza came and the delivery guy looked like something out of an underwear ad, one of those quasi-alarming New York improbabilities; Bonnie chatted him up while Caroline paid and when he left they made unsubtle innuendos about him, Elena laughing in her margarita like they were still sixteen, Bonnie's face lit up from the inside the way you only got to see if you were privileged enough to be her real friend. It was reassuring to feel that life could still be like this, light-hearted and fun and something you'd forget the morning after, a summer errand. For a second Caroline almost forgot that Tyler hadn't shown up. Was it absurd to resent him? Maybe; but she did. She couldn't help but feel he ought to have been there, if only to make it up to her for leaving her behind. In the church he had said 'til death do us part' and Caroline had thought —but it was a ridiculous, romantic notion— that they would die together, or not at all.

One good thing about New York, Bonnie said, as though there were plenty of others on the tip of her tongue, was that the metro was open all night —so when they left the sky was a mess of mauve and too-ripe orange and narcotic pink, the way light only got in big cities, dripping on the edge of the sky and onto the buildings. Bonnie kissed them at the door more effusively than she usually did, and she hugged Caroline hard enough to break her bones, said in a drunken shout-whisper against her collarbone, "You'll be fine." Caroline wasn't so sure, but it was gratifying that Bonnie thought so —Bonnie who, after all, could have written the book on how to be fragile and breakable and still survive, how to make strength out of suffering.

The metro was deserted, save for a few roamers and a girl at the very end of their wagon, nose buried in the book, casual in a way disavowed by the tense set of her shoulders. She couldn't be a lot younger than them —than them when they'd died— and it was a strange thing, thrilling, to realize that they had no reason to be afraid. It took so much more to hurt them now than an inebriated stranger; you had to really think about it, plan ahead. Caroline flexed her hand. Her teeth felt like they were burning, trapped in their precious casing of flesh, and she pinched Elena's sleeve between her fingers, to tell her to look. Elena did. She understood; she nodded. They crossed the wagon and sat next to the girl. She shot them a surprised, fearful look, but after a few stations her shoulders relaxed a fraction. 

They didn't get off at their stop, too preoccupied by the surreal experience of the train at night, every small signal flashing in the darkness and the names of the stations blurring on the wall opposite, barely visible through the dirty windows, or maybe mindful of the girl. When they finally got off and took a train in the other direction it was even quieter. In the street Elena's small heels printed a dull thud on the concrete when she walked. On the surface the city was like a prowling cat, quiet with a sense of oncoming brutality, still illuminated. Caroline amended the saying in her mind: it wasn't that the city never slept but that it always slept with one eye open, wary like a predator lying in wait.

In the hotel night staff greeted them tiredly as they tipped against each other in the corridor, pretending the alcohol had gotten to them. Caroline expected to see the room empty when she came in but it wasn't: Hayley was a bundle in her bed, this time under the sheets. The line of her back moved slightly when they opened the door, the only sign that she had heard them. Elena didn't comment. She took off her jacket and it fell in a heap on the floor. Caroline resisted the urge to pick it up and fold it.

Elena ducked into the bathroom for a few minutes to wash her teeth and clean her face; when she came out she looked like a younger version of herself. It was difficult to get used to the many facets of Elena Gilbert again, but Caroline found that she didn't mind the learning; the only thing she did mind was how hard it was sometimes, the occasional awkwardness. You never wanted to feel like you were a stranger around your friends.

She changed into the clothes she used as pajamas, a threadbare t-shirt and shorts. Elena smiled at her in the hazy darkness of the night. The drapes weren't closed over the window and outside New York was a multicolored chaos, an abyss spreading in all directions. But Caroline wasn't afraid, she found. She looked at Elena again and in a tacit agreement they placed themselves on each side of the beds and pushed them together, trying to do it as silently as possible not to wake Hayley up. They got rid of the bedside table in the middle, pushed it to the side, and when the beds were as close as they could possibly be, one big king-size in the middle of the room, when Elena was done arranging the covers and Caroline had fluffed her pillows, they climbed in.

They arranged themselves in the bed out of instinct, curled towards each other with their foreheads and their toes touching, so close their conversation wasn't above a whisper. It was a good position, Caroline thought. There had been a lot of sleepovers where they'd slept like that, or with Bonnie on the other side of Elena, what Elena's mother called "my little box of sardines," closing the door softly and making them promise to go to sleep soon every time, even though they never listened.

It slipped out of her mouth when she was on the cusp of sleep, a garbled murmur in a crease of her pillow. "It should've been me."

Suddenly Elena's eyes were wide open, big and brown and concerned. Caroline felt her opening her mouth to say no, it shouldn't have been, it wasn't your fault; Caroline touched her hand to remind her of all the times she'd said the same thing about people who had died in her name, all the times when she'd crumbled in Caroline's arms and cried, I don't deserve this, I don't deserve to live. Caroline had said the wrong things too many times before understanding that there was no right thing to say, that the only way was to hold her tight and try and make sure nothing inside was permanently broken, that she carried on nevertheless. After all there was no other choice; no alternative. 

Elena understood. With her fingers she traced the swell of Caroline's cheek. "But it wasn't," she said eventually, unbearably tender, and Caroline had to close her eyes to keep the image from burning her retinas.

The next morning it was a faint rustling that woke her up. She'd always been a deep sleeper, even as a vampire, her supernatural abilities shutting off as she fell asleep, but since Tyler's death she had become uncomfortably hyper-aware. Her nights were filled with nightmares she couldn't remember but which left her already exhausted upon waking, her bones feeling as though they'd been ground to dust. She stretched. The vertebrae in her back cracked, and Elena made a face. She followed the trajectory of Caroline's eyes across the room, lingering over the horizon framed by the window, ears picking up the bustle of the street, and then on Hayley's bed. It was neatly made, tucked in at the sides, but the maid service couldn't have come yet, not so early, while Caroline was still asleep; on the pillow was a sheet of paper folded in four, with a black scrawl on the side facing up. 

"She left a note," Elena said. "I didn't open it."

"Why not?"

Elena picked up the note and showed it to Caroline. The scrawl formed her name. Elena said, "Not my place." 

And Caroline found it funny, because of how many times Elena had made the executive decision that she _needed_ to know something that wasn't about her at all, but she didn't say anything. She took the note but didn't open it; it felt heavy, a lump of steel in her hands. 

"I need to get dressed first," she said. "I probably won't survive today without a least four shots of espresso."

Elena smiled, genuine and real. She handed Caroline a Starbucks cup. "Got you covered," she said. "I picked it up downstairs."

Caroline took it, feeling immensely grateful for Elena. The coffee was warm, almost-hot, and full of all the sugary chemicals Caroline liked. There was even a hint of caramel in it. On the side of the cup it said _Caroline_ , the thick loopy handwriting ten times more welcoming than Hayley's worried scrawl had been.

"Since when have you been up?"

"A while ago," Elena said with a shrug. "I went jogging. I didn't want to wake you up. You seemed like you needed the rest."

Jogging —it threw Caroline off, a little, because it seemed to her like it was the end of the world, and Elena was going jogging like she didn't feel any of that urgency and that rage. Maybe she didn't. (Besides, who went jogging in New York City? It was so Elena, to be heroic even in the mundanity of her routines.)

"I did," she said. She didn't tell Elena about the nightmares. She'd want to help, and she couldn't —she just couldn't. It wasn't hard to figure out that they weren't something that went away quickly, or easily, or at all, sometimes, though Caroline hoped they would eventually. Sometimes they were unusual even for nightmares, with colors like a fever dream and sounds like she was trapped in a fish bowl. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Sure," Elena said, her gaze straying towards the note. But she didn't ask Caroline to open it. 

So Caroline didn't, not immediately; she drank her coffee and then got dressed, grimacing to herself when the smell of their laundry detergent hit her nostrils and everything came back swinging like a bat to the head, every conversation she'd had with Tyler about how to separate whites and colors, cotton and silk, all the fights about which brand of detergent to choose and whether or not to buy softener. She put on a purple top with a bow on the shoulder. Her arms felt numb.

When she was finished, trying to ignore the way her fingers had trembled on the button of her jeans, face scrubbed and make-up applied and feeling incrementally readier to face the madness and cruelty of the world, Caroline picked up the note from the bed. Elena looked up from where she had been pretending to read —at that rate she was probably going to know the _Dictionary of Ancient and Lost Languages_ by heart soon. 

The note was written in the same tight scrawl as Caroline's name. There was an address, then a few words: _Thank you. This is Klaus. Tell Elena there's money for the hotel in her bag. Good luck._ Caroline laughed. 

"What does it say?" Elena asked. 

"There's money in your bag."

Elena's eyebrows drew together. "What?"

"Hayley. She put money in your bag," Caroline said. "For the hotel."

Elena frowned, annoyed that Hayley had gone through her stuff while she was sleeping and she hadn't noticed, and Caroline thought that it was probably exactly what Hayley wanted.

"I hope she didn't take anything," Elena said, grumbling a little. Maybe one day Caroline would understand what it was that just didn't work between the two of them. 

"That wouldn't make any sense," she pointed out. 

Elena looked up at her, opened her mouth to say, why wouldn't she be a thief, on top of everything else? then thought better of it. "Well," she said instead. She went to her suitcase, and sure enough, there was a handful of bills tucked in the middle of her underwear. She scoffed, then crouched to count them before she got back on her feet and asked Caroline, "Does it say anything else?"

"Good luck," said Caroline, because she wanted a little more time to think about the address before she told Elena and what she was thinking disappeared under the weight of her opinion. It was hard to hold your own in front of Elena, especially for her.

Elena's face softened. Caroline thought that she might have noticed the way Caroline cringed every someone said Condolences or Sorry for your loss.

"She says—" Caroline started, then couldn't find a way to say the rest. "There's—" In the end she just handed Elena the note. Elena looked at her inquisitively, then back at the note, then up again. This time she was frowning. 

"This is—" she said.

"Yeah," Caroline said.

"Do you think it's real?"

Caroline shrugged. "I don't see the point otherwise." She didn't add, Hayley likes me, or that it was a favor; those things were wild guesses at best.

"Why would she give you Klaus's address? How did she even get it?"

"You're talking to me like I know something more than you do. I was sleeping until ten minutes ago, Elena, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night to conspire with Hayley," Caroline snapped. She squeezed her eyes shut. "Sorry."

Elena looked kind, but not in that excruciating way people got when they heard about Tyler. "I'm sorry too," she said. She turned the note over in her hand, like there might be a clue on the back or something written in invisible ink. But it seemed a bit convoluted for the situation.

Caroline went to turn her ring around her finger, nervous, only to realize she wasn't wearing it. She felt guilty for not having realized, for forgetting to put it on as part of her morning ritual. If it all went that way, and that fast… how long until she forgot about him entirely? It was years of shared memories, of near-perfect love. But, a little voice at the back of her head said, sounding eerily like Klaus, a few years are nothing in the greater picture of a life like ours, love.

She thought about going to get the ring, but there was no way to do that surreptitiously, without Elena noticing. For a second Caroline wished Elena would leave; then she could put the ring on and touch two fingers to the metal of the tumi blade where it was smothered between a pair of white pants and a yellow towel; for some reason she was itching for it. It felt almost like a substitute for smoking, the urge to have something to turn in your hands, and in that case it was the jagged stone of the blade, the reassuring carved symbols. Caroline tried not to feel weird about it.

"Do you want to go?" Elena asked. She didn't wait for an answer, didn't seem to want one, just started collecting her things on the little table stacked against the wall. Caroline watched her: her phone, her watch, her necklace. 

"I'll go," she said before she could stop herself. 

Elena's fingers stilled on her wrist, attaching her watch. She blinked twice in rapid succession. "What do you mean?"

"I'll go," Caroline repeated. "You don't need to come. You don't—" _like Klaus,_ she was going to say, but swallowed it, "it'll go faster if I go alone. I'll be in and out. He likes me; if you go he might get ideas about doppelgangers again." She shrugged as loosely as she could, the muscles of her shoulders coiled and hard. "Think about it."

Elena frowned. "What if something happens?"

"Nothing will happen."

"It's Klaus. Who knows what he'll do."

You had to admire how little stock Elena put in the belief that people could change, Caroline thought petulantly. But —no, that was wrong. Elena was one of the most forgiving people Caroline had ever met, on the surface at least.

"I'll be fine," Caroline assured. Then she said, "He didn't kill Tyler."

"I never said he did."

Caroline gaped.

"I didn't," Elena insisted. "I just said he might've. It's what makes the most sense."

"Maybe ten years ago," Caroline said, that twinge of guilt she felt every time she remembered she was still lying to Elena about what had happened at the wedding pinching her gut. "He probably doesn't even remember me."

"He remembers you," said Elena. In her mouth it sounded like a warning.

"I'll dazzle him with my witty repartee and my police-style interrogation," Caroline said. "I promise. It'll be done in twenty minutes, and then we can leave this place."

"I thought you liked New York."

 _I liked New York when I'd never actually been_ , Caroline thought. "It's not about that," she said. "I just want to find who killed my husband, and tear their intestines out."

Something flashed on Elena's face, maybe fear. "I guess I can't do anything about it," she said.

Caroline gave her what she hoped was a bold, brave smile. "It's never stopped you before."

Elena bit down on her bottom lip. She never did things halfway, so it was a clean bite, a clear flash of teeth that closed down on the plump pink skin. She was hesitating, but not for long —Caroline was still looking at her lips when she took a step forward and framed Caroline's face in her hands, then kissed her mouth, very gently, softly, like a friend.

"For luck," she said when she pulled away, coloring a little. 

Caroline tilted her head to show she understood the instinct. It wasn't the same thing, not exactly, but for Tyler and her the long, hot kisses they shared every time they had to part had been a sort of talisman.

Caroline took Elena's hand and squeezed. "I'll be fine," she said. "You should book us tickets for tomorrow."

"Not tomorrow." 

Caroline wanted to ask why, but she remembered her gray face in the mirror, her bad dreams. Sleeping with her arms around Elena had been the first unbroken night of sleep since Tyler's death, but she still didn't feel like she had gotten any rest at all.

"The day after, then," she said. 

"We'll need to buy equipment, tents and all that. If we're going in the forest."

Caroline frowned at 'tent' and 'forest'. "I guess," she said. She brightened a little, smirked. "Don't tell me; you've always wanted to go backpacking through the Andes." She knew it for certain, actually, because Elena had made a vision board in junior year and Caroline remembered the little brown-red mountains cut from an ad in one of Jenna's magazines.

"I hoped it would be in better circumstances," Elena said, with no irony whatsoever, and the lump in Caroline's throat was back.

"Okay," she said when she didn't feel so choked up anymore. She picked up the note and stuffed it in her jacket pocket. After a moment's hesitation she went to her bag and dug for her ring, too. She couldn't help a sigh of relief when she slid it on her finger. "For protection," she told Elena who was looking, then felt stupid for it. But Elena just nodded.

"Call me if he does anything fishy," Elena said.

That description was large enough, Caroline thought. "Everything's going to be okay," she said. "I'll just ask him, he'll laugh in my face, and then we can go do what we actually have to do."

She was already halfway out of the door when she heard Elena say, "It would make sense for it to be him, you know. He used to love you." After a pause she added, "And he liked tearing people's hearts out, too."

Caroline didn't have anything to say in answer to that, so she didn't.

The address Hayley had given her was for a gigantic, immodest building in the center of Manhattan. When Caroline got off the metro and saw it looming over her she snorted: Klaus literally couldn't have been more blatant if he'd tried. Then again, he'd never been all that subtle, had he? His assets —what he liked to think were his assets— had always been brute force and charm.

She looked up. The top of the building, so high Caroline had to crane her neck (that was probably the point) was glittering in the sun and underneath it was a combination of jagged metal, rough grey steel, beams sticking out like bones from a wound, and row after row of huge windows, circling the entire place like a belt. There were two vampires in front of the entrance, a sliding metal panel that wouldn't have been out of place in a warehouse. They were skittish and young. Caroline thought Klaus ought to be more careful with his security. She checked no one was looking, then held one of them out of reach with a strangling hand, fingers pressed down on his carotid, while she was drinking from the other. When she released him he fell in a crumpled, boneless heap on the ground. Caroline smiled at the remaining guard, trying not to get blood on her top. He looked mutinous but he was almost laughingly easy to knock out, even more so than his acolyte. Caroline sank her fangs into his neck then thought better of it. She pulled back and spit out a mouthful of blood on the ground. She didn't want to be delirious with it while talking to Klaus; it was always better to have a clear head with him.

The big metal door slid open easily. The inside also looked like a warehouse, albeit a very stylish one —there were paintings on the walls, masters everywhere Caroline looked, expensive trinkets, plush velvet chairs and at the very far end of the room a wide glass desk like Klaus was pretending to be a businessman, only the desk was completely empty. Caroline was pretty sure if she looked up there would be a chandelier hanging from one of the exposed iron beams.

Klaus wasn't in the room, but Caroline wasn't bothered by it. She knew he was somewhere near; she could feel it. She twisted her ring on her finger, relieved to find that it was there this time. She crossed the room. There was a door behind the desk, hard to notice if you weren't looking for it. It was locked. Caroline gripped the handle and pulled. The door jumped neatly off its hinges with a horrible creak of metal. Caroline rubbed her knuckles against her thigh: this was her version of throwing plates, she thought. She felt better already. What little blood she had swallowed had invigorated her.

Klaus was sitting in the middle of the second room, slouched in a pretentious chaise thing which Caroline assumed had cost more than her house. Surprise flashed on his face when he saw her, like he had electrodes stuck to his wrists, but he got hold of it quickly. He smirked, bowing his head a fraction.

"It's a little late to call me back now, isn't it, love?"

Caroline ignored him. "You've turned hipster," she said, looking pointedly around the room. There were heavy purplish drapes in front of the windows, blocking the light, though streams of it flowed through every interstice, smooth as butter; the rest was a mish-mash of excruciatingly modern furniture and objects that looked like they belonged in a museum.

Klaus sat up. His legs splayed open; he rested his elbows on his thighs and leaned forward, voracious. Immediately Caroline felt as though there was a giant magnet at the center of her chest and it was pulling her towards him, into his orbit, not caring which bones it broke in the process. She felt guilty and nauseous, but unable to stop it —and unable too to stop from remembering the velvet brush of his mouth on her back, between her thighs, his blood dripping from her fangs and her choking on it, blindingly certain that he would save her without having to think about it, because he loved her; the terrifying rush she got out of knowing that she had done nothing and yet held such great power over him, the power to make him kneel and fuck his tongue inside her, fingers pressing worshipful bruises in the skin of her thighs, before she had even touched him.

As usual, his eyes seemed to read straight through her. "Caroline Forbes," he said, his voice twisting ribbon-like around her throat. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Caroline took a breath. "I was looking for you," she said.

Klaus bit into a smile. "Isn't it usually the other way around?"

She shrugged. It would be easy enough to fall into the ping-pong of banter with him, to pretend she still loathed him with as much energy and dedication as she used to —but now there were other things to think about, and she wasn't going to beat around the bush this time. Not only was there no time but she, selfishly, needed to hear the words to calm the rate of her heart, this infuriating state of disarray Klaus's presence always seemed to put her in. "Tyler is dead."

Klaus arched an eyebrow. "Good riddance," he said. Then, purposefully belated, he added, "Sorry. I know you were fond of him."

"He was my husband," Caroline said, even though it was useless, because it was what they did, what _Klaus_ did: needle her until she responded, and then—

"Yes," Klaus said, and his eyes got dark, "I seem to remember a wedding."

They looked at each other from opposite sides of the room. He hadn't changed, Caroline thought, except maybe he looked a little more adult, and even more dangerous. He was wearing a suit like that time at the Lockwood estate, charcoal grey with a steel blue tie. He fit in the warehouse like he had been dressed by a stylist. Caroline wondered if he had, or maybe if Rebekah had chosen his clothes for him. It seemed like the kind of thing they would do, in-between plotting everyone's demise and snacking on innocent bystanders.

Klaus was looking at her too, Caroline realized. It had been a while, but it still felt kind of familiar, his gaze sliding over her. He was appraising her.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," she said, because she didn't want to get too comfortable in it.

Klaus smiled, and it bared his teeth. He stood up and tugged his sleeves down. He wasn't wearing the necklace Caroline remembered; maybe under his clothes. "Who killed him?"

Caroline opened her mouth to say, _who?_ , because she was distracted. She closed it before she could say anything, but Klaus saw. His smile turned sharper, more cruel.

"I thought you might know something about that," she said instead, refusing to let him unsettle her.

"Tyler hasn't been my responsibility for a long time, love. I surrendered him to you, remember?" He was talking about it like they were divorced parents discussing custody.

"His heart was torn out," Caroline said.

Klaus flexed his hand at his side, remembering what it felt like to plunge your hand into someone's chest and close your fingers over a live, beating heart. Caroline wondered if he had different techniques now. Maybe they were less bloody —maybe he missed it. Then again, it wasn't like Klaus to deny himself anything.

"You think I did it?" Klaus laughed. Caroline frowned. It did seem ridiculous, when he put it like that. Come to think of it, it had seemed ridiculous when Elena had said it. "I'm being an awful host," Klaus said. "Do you want something to drink? I've got a bottle of '54 Chateau Margaux somewhere."

Caroline's mouth was dry. She thought, why not. If the blood hadn't gotten her drunk, good wine certainly wouldn't. "I guess I'll need it," she said. "And Elena does."

"Elena Gilbert thinks I killed your husband?"

Caroline shrugged, as though to say, _I know, it seemed strange to me too_. "Apparently she thinks you still carry that torch."

When she looked at Klaus again he had two large ball glasses in his hands. He handed her one. "Well," he said, "you did look quite fetching in that wedding dress." He smirked against the rim of the glass. "And even moreso out of it."

Caroline took a sip. It was really good wine. She felt an urge to stalk to the windows and open the drapes; the darkness felt precarious. She set her glass down and did just that. Dirty, dusty New York light flooded the room. Caroline's gaze snapped to Klaus's hand, expecting for half a second to see him burst into flames. She wasn't sure how to feel about it. But he was only taken off guard; his face contorted in a grimace, slipping into the animal. His mouth opened in a fang-adorned snarl.

"Well," Caroline asked, taking advantage of his disorientation, "did you?"

"Did I what?" Some wine had sloshed out of his glass onto the ground. Thankfully there was none on his suit.

"Kill Tyler."

Klaus looked bored, and amused, and petulant. It was a strange combination of expressions. "If I'd wanted to kill him, darling," he drawled, "I would have done it a long time ago."

"Why didn't you?"

"You asked me not to," Klaus said simply, and Caroline hated him for it.

Elena would want proof; she couldn't just go back to the hotel and tell her that Klaus had said it wasn't him. She took another sip of wine. Something inside her was trembling.

"What do you even do here, anyway?" she asked to stall for time, gesturing with her hand at the room. It wasn't as big as the first one, the one with the chandelier, but it was still sprawling. It made sense: the Mikaelsons never did anything small.

"This and that," Klaus shrugged. "I dabble." When Caroline rolled her eyes he smiled, unrepentant. "What would be the point of telling you of my nefarious plans in advance, now love? Since you and your little friend have such a vested interest in heroism."

Caroline couldn't help but snort. "I think we're over that now," she said, even though it occurred to her that she didn't really know, for Elena. She certainly wasn't interested in saving the world anymore —though thinking about it, it had never been really about that, had it? In the end it was always about saving their own skins. "Go ahead and be nefarious all you want."

"And there I was thinking marriage wouldn't tame you," said Klaus, mock-sad. The word 'marriage' hit Caroline like a truck. "If I didn't know better," Klaus continued, oblivious, "I would think you missed me. Coming all the way from Vermont to visit. I'm flattered." Caroline was surprised he remembered where Tyler and she lived. That he knew at all, actually. It didn't really work in his favor, though he didn't seem all that interested in being exonerated.

She took in a breath. In front of her nose was a column of golden dust, illuminated by sunlight. Caroline felt like crying, or breaking something.

"Did you really mean it, about showing me the world?"

Klaus grinned with the side of his mouth. It looked almost genuine. "I do," he said. "Is there anything in particular you'd want to see?"

Caroline had wanted to see everything, the first time he'd asked her; and she'd hated him and said no and felt sick to her stomach with want and rage. It had haunted her for some time after. Now she didn't seem to want anything, except to get revenge for Tyler.

"How can I know for sure that you haven't killed Tyler?"

"Do you want an alibi?" Klaus didn't wait for an answer, like he thought it was too preposterous to even consider. "I guess you can't, love. Your doppelganger will just have to take my word for it."

He said 'your doppelganger' like he really thought that Elena was hers, that Caroline owned her —that in their divorce Elena had been parceled to Caroline. Caroline wondered if he thought of Katherine as his.

Unexpectedly, Caroline remembered the knife in her bag. Maybe she would kill the murderer with it, for poetic irony. Not that that was something she was interested in: in fact it was more of a Klaus thing, to think in advance about how he was going to kill someone —but still.

"Where are the others?"

"The others?" Klaus raised an eyebrow.

"Your entourage," Caroline said.

"I believe you met two of them at the door," Klaus said.

"Yeah, I did." Caroline snorted in her glass. "I hope no one's out for your skin, because those guys are a joke."

Klaus appraised her again; this time his eyes were fiery and wondering. "Did you kill them?"

Caroline rolled her eyes. "No."

"You could've," Klaus said. "They were disposable." He didn't add: I would've liked to see you kill them, but it was clear enough from his tone. Which was a strange thing to get a hard-on from, but then again, they were vampires, so maybe it wasn't that strange. Caroline had had some time to get used to the idea.

" _You_ 're the big bad wolf, remember? And I'm the damsel in distress."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"In distress."

"No. Don't worry, I don't need you to save me _again_ ," Caroline snarked. She didn't point out that most of the times he'd saved her it was because he was the one who'd put her in danger in the first place. They both knew it. "I just wanted to know, about Tyler."

"I didn't kill him," Klaus said again, waving his empty glass in the air. "And incidentally, I don't know who did." He frowned, and Caroline thought he might be realizing that he was the only hybrid left once more. It must feel lonely, being the only one in your species. Maybe that was why he was always trying to build an army, because of how fragile family seemed to be for him.

"Okay," Caroline said. She set down her glass on a low table near the wall. She did feel a little drunk, but it wasn't the alcohol, or the blood. He always made her feel this way, like he was literally clouding her judgment. In his presence she stopped being able to tell right from wrong.

Her heart was pounding in her ears. He can hear, she thought, but his heartbeat had been a quick staccato since he'd seen her. Suddenly she thought about Elena's words: he remembers you.

"Doesn't it get boring, after a while? I mean, knowing that you'll be here forever. Doesn't it end up just being about things… dying?" This was an unusually honest question to ask Klaus Mikaelson of all people, but Caroline didn't take it back.

"No," Klaus said. "The world is infinite. Death is only ever the beginning for us. Isn't your witch friend the anchor? There is always a next step." He moved closer. "When you have seen the world change as much as I have…" now his voice was a whisper, "you'll understand. Things never only have two sides. It's not about right and wrong. There are other things. Better things."

"Better things than justice and goodness?" Caroline asked. She meant to make it sound sarcastic, but it didn't.

"Yes. Those things change. Joy doesn't. Pleasure, beauty. Revenge."

"You can't live on revenge," Caroline said.

It wasn't the right thing to say to Klaus. It would have been the right thing to say to Elena, because she would've said, of course you can't. But Klaus had spent a hundred and fifty years chasing after Katherine. When he'd started she'd had a different name.

Klaus's eyes were riveted in Caroline's. Caroline had to physically keep herself from shivering. "I don't think you believe that," Klaus said, almost gently. "You understand revenge. You used to want revenge against me."

"What for?" Caroline asked. But she remembered his words: there is an allure to darkness. No, she had thought then. This is enough darkness for me.

"For making you want to come with me. Don't deny it," he added, even though Caroline wasn't sure she would've. "But you've always been strong."

"I didn't. Come with you."

Klaus shook his head. He was so close Caroline could see his eyelashes feathering on his cheek. "No," he said. "You stayed in the church."

It had been the right decision. Caroline was almost sure it had been the right decision.

"So," Klaus said. He rested his forehead against hers for a second, tender, then pulled back, smirking now. "How was that marriage? Was it as mundane and human as you had hoped for?" Before Caroline could respond he traced a finger over her knuckles. The touch was like an electric shock. "Good thing they added that bit at the end," he said with a shark smile, "'til death do us part."

Caroline jerked backwards. "Fuck you," she said. "You have no heart." 

Klaus pinched his lips, irritated. "So you've said. Many times. And yet—"

Caroline didn't want to hear it. "Okay, I get it," she said hurriedly. She felt a bit light-headed. "You can go back to your scheming; I have a murderer to catch."

Klaus perked up interestedly. "What will you do to him?"

There wasn't enough kindness left in Caroline to lie. "Kill him," she said. She didn't add any of the gory details, but from the way Klaus was looking at her he knew. He liked it, even.

They were close again, even though Caroline didn't feel like she had moved. The ring was strangling her finger, cutting her circulation. When had it started being too small? Her fingers weren't pudgy, never had been. It seemed absurd that they would stand so close in such a big room. They must look ridiculous.

Klaus's fingers rested on her cheek briefly, not long enough for her to swat them away. "I haven't pursued you in a long time, Caroline," he said. "I've left you alone to live your little sham of a human life —and yet you seem to have found trouble anyway. What does that say about you?"

"Even the Vermont customs can't stop Murphy's law," Caroline said, but her voice felt raw.

There was no reason for her to stay here now, she thought. It was dangerous: his voice knew what spots to hit in her stomach, on her body, how to fit in the bruises his hands had left on her a long time ago. She'd been careful not to remember that time before the wedding too much during those last few years, but now it seemed to play constantly at the back of her mind in excruciating detail.

She turned on her heels to leave the room, and Klaus followed her. In the big, near-empty warehouse space the sun was dimmer, hitting the metal like it thought it was diamonds. Caroline wondered what it really was Klaus did there, if he would tell her if she asked the right way. Probably. The general consensus seemed to be that he would do a lot of things for her. But for a long time she'd had someone else who would do those same things, and who wasn't a psychopathic murderer on the side.

She thought Klaus might try and convince her to say, or maybe to go away with him like the last time, but he didn't. Maybe his empire in the city wasn't powerful enough and there was no kingdom to govern with him; maybe he really had forgotten her, a little, no matter what reasons he'd had in the first place for being so interested in who she was and what she did. It didn't feel that way, but it wasn't like Caroline was a Mikaelson expert; a lot of what he did had confused her at the best of times, not to mention his siblings. He let her walk away, resting his hip against the edge of the glass desk.

When she was finished hauling the sliding door open and she had one foot out the door, he asked, his voice reverberating against the walls, "Why didn't you?"

Caroline turned around. "What?"

"Why didn't you think it was me who'd killed Tyler? I suppose it makes sense, if you follow your doppelgangers preposterous logic."

"I never said I didn't."

Klaus smirked. "You said Elena thought so. I know an omission when I hear one."

Caroline shrugged. "It didn't make sense. That you'd go all the way to the other side of the country to kill Tyler after all this time. Besides, there was—" she was going to talk about the knife, but thought better of it, "there were signs. That it wasn't you."

Klaus's eyes were sharp. "Don't you think you deserve to have people kill for you?" he asked.

The thought made her stomach clench. "It's a twisted way of looking at things. Of course not."

"Occupational hazard," Klaus said, shrugging one unrepentant shoulder. "For the record, I would gladly kill for you."

Caroline rolled her eyes. Only in Klaus's mouth would that sound like an endearment. "You don't need a reason to kill people."

"Well, it's very relaxing. You should try it." Then his smile fell, and he looked like he might take a step forward, join her at the door. He didn't. "You deserve your every whim catered to, Caroline. Maybe now you will let someone do that for you." He meant: me.

Caroline wasn't as disgusted as she'd imagined she would be at the thought. She had always lacked the necessary protection against Klaus.

"Unlikely," she said, and strode out before she could implicate herself any further.


	4. Chapter 4

She was feeling drained when she came back to the hotel. She opened the door and Elena was sitting on the edge of the bed, pretending not to wait. Her hair was draped over her shoulder in a half-finished braid, like she'd started making it and then had got distracted halfway through. 

"Well?" she asked. "Did you find him?"

Caroline nodded.

"What did he say? Is he— did he do it?"

"No," Caroline said. There was a headache between her eyes, and she knew that the coming conversation wouldn't improve anything. It was inevitable, though.

Elena frowned. "How do you know? What did he say? Tell me what he said exactly."

"He said it didn't make any sense for him to kill Tyler. Which I knew. Which I told you, actually."

"Well," Elena said, chin jutting out, "did he tell you where he was when it happened?"

"If he'd killed Tyler he wouldn't have been able to shut up about it. He's not a very discrete murderer, I don't know if you've noticed, Elena." She was being bitchy, but she couldn't help it.

"So what you're telling me is that you went there and had a nice conversation with Klaus which doesn't help us at all. God, Care."

"I said from the start that this was useless. We should have left right away. Klaus never had anything to do with this."

Elena snorted, but she seemed angry. Of course she was angry. "Figures that you would think that," she said. "You and he have always been so close." She managed to make it sound like an insult. Caroline knew it was unfair, but couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt anyway.

"I can't believe you're still not over that," she said instead. She didn't want to fight, she really didn't. She wanted to sleep, and in the morning she wanted to catch a plane to Peru and start all over again. Or —no. The day after, Elena had said.

Elena did want a fight. She was spoiling for it, stubborn in a blind, violent way Caroline was pretty sure she hadn't been before. "I can't believe you are," she spit. "Sleeping with the vampire version of Hitler doesn't strike you as a big deal?"

Caroline recoiled at the comparison. "It was twice!" she shouted, knee-jerk, louder than she meant to.

Elena yelled back, "It was—" at the same volume. Then she stopped. 

It took a few seconds —frozen, blinking seconds, Elena looking right at her with something akin to hysteria— before Caroline realized what she'd said. She felt stupid —it was such a dumb mistake. Then again, she'd never been really good at keeping secrets. Her policy was that they didn't help you, secrets: they were heavy and weighed you down, and then you ended up drowning.

Elena sat back down on the bed. "What?" she asked, her voice worryingly cold.

Caroline grimaced. "Look —no, I—"

"Was it before or after the woods?"

Caroline just stared at her.

"Before or after?" Elena repeated. She sounded like a jealous girlfriend. Caroline wanted to tell her that this wasn't about her, that she had no jurisdiction over who Caroline slept with —but it was untrue, to an extent.

"After," she said.

Something angry rippled on Elena's face. Her hands were balled in fists at her side. She looked uncomprehending and bizarrely small and so, so furious. "When?"

"At the—" Caroline's breath caught in her throat—this had to be the hardest part, "at the wedding. Just before —he came into the room when I was getting ready."

She watched realization dawn on Elena's face as she was talking, and the succession of expressions: shock, anger, disappointment, disgust. One part of her thought that it was unfair, that Elena had done worse things than sleeping with someone who wouldn't even use it against them; the other part was buried under crushing, nauseating guilt.

"Is that why you wanted to go alone?"

"No," Caroline said quickly —too quickly, she realized when she saw Elena's eyes on her face, searching. She didn't believe her.

Elena shook her head. Caroline could almost see her replaying the entire night in her head, trying to pinpoint what she had missed, when exactly Klaus had closed the door behind him and—

"Why? Why would you do that?"

Caroline didn't know how to answer. The first time, after the woods, Elena hadn't understood either, unable to fathom why Caroline would fall into the arms of someone like Klaus. She saw that he was past redemption, and it set them at different ends of the universe, irreconcilable. In the end her biggest mistake had been to assume that Caroline was like her, would always strive towards goodness. 

Caroline could have said a lot of things right then —I wanted to; he was there; I was afraid; he forced me—, but she kept silent instead. She didn't want to lie, and the truth would only make things worse.

"Fuck, Care!" When Elena was angry she got incandescent, her long hair undone, whipping her cheeks, her eyes bright as embers, her whole body hard and tensile, a piano chord on the verge of snapping. "I can't believe— I didn't think it could get worse than you sleeping with him once, but—"

"I didn't think—"

Elena whipped around, righteous. Her cheeks were red. "No, you didn't! You didn't think! If you had none of this would've happened!"

"None of what?"

"You still don't think Klaus killed Tyler?"

"Of course not! I just told you he didn't. What does the fact that he—that we—" she couldn't say it, "change?"

"That's how those people work, Caroline. You put something they want in front of their nose and they—" she breathed in harshly through her nose, "they don't give up until they have it. You give them an inch and they want a mile, they want the whole fucking country. That's how they work. They have no restraint, no sense of justice. They're animals."

It took Caroline a few seconds to digest that tirade, because at first she didn't understand what Elena meant by 'those people': they didn't know anyone else even remotely similar to Klaus, except maybe his siblings; and she—

"Are you calling me a tease? Are you seriously saying that I'm the reason Tyler got killed?" Just the day before Elena had whispered in the darkness that it wasn't her fault, eyes glowing like the mere idea of it was preposterous.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut. "If the shoe fits," she said through pursed lips. Then she seemed to realize what she'd said, or that she'd let herself say it, and her face melted with guilt. "I mean—"

 _No takebacks_ , Caroline wanted to say. She plowed on, "You mean that I fraternized with the enemy, and I got what I deserved. That's a little manichean, don't you think, Elena?"

Elena must have been too angry for poker faces —it was obvious that she was surprised. Maybe it was Caroline hearing talk like that —when they were younger Elena had always let herself think that they were on the same track, Elena's track—; or maybe it was that Caroline knew the word 'manichean'.

"This isn't about that," Elena said. She was calmer, but still fuming. In a few minutes she would start pacing, and she would be beautiful and righteous, striding back and forth across the room. Caroline wouldn't let that happen. "It's about trust, and loyalty. How can any of us trust you now? The others —they'll never—"

Caroline couldn't help but snort. "What others? How long has it been since you've last seen anyone from back then other than Bonnie?"

"I live in Mystic Falls," Elena said, chiding.

"Okay." Caroline amended, "How long has it been since it was the Scooby gang against the world, plotting to defeat evil? We're not a they. We were never a they, actually: just a group of scared kids running around trying to save their skin, and failing more often than not. This is about you, as usual."

"Bonnie—"

"I'm pretty sure Bonnie slept with Kol Mikaelson," Caroline said, and Elena gaped as though she hadn't suspected as much for years.

But— "Not on her wedding day," she said viciously. She meant for it to hurt, and it did.

"Do you think I meant for it to happen? It's not like I planned it in advance, Elena."

Elena tilted her head. She wanted to be judge and jury again, trace the delimitation between right and wrong. But it wasn't that easy; it had never been that easy, and Caroline wasn't going to pretend for Elena's benefit any longer.

"You tell me," Elena said. "It's not like I understand anything that goes through your head, apparently." It was supposed to be cutting, but it fell flat, and she just sounded sad. This, somehow, hurt even more than the insults had.

Caroline knuckled her eyes. Now that the adrenalin was settling she felt tired again, and ashamed. "He was…" It was always difficult to explain Klaus. Caroline wasn't sure she understood how this —thing between them, if there was still —ever— a thing, worked; most of the time it seemed to her that it was purely chemistry, the same kind of animal magnetism that made the sea strive endlessly to rise and touch the underbelly of the moon. She sat down on the bed facing Elena's, her head in her hands. If she didn't look at Elena it would be easier —to remember, and to tell. "I got married when I was twenty-three, Elena. I know it doesn't really mean the same thing, for us, but… there were so many things I wanted to do before settling down, and I was so afraid. And all of you —it was like you were counting on me to be happy on everyone's behalf, make it all okay. I'm not that person. I'm not—" She meant to say, you're the martyr, the one with the world on her shoulders, but she realized it would be cruel. She looked up at Elena. "I thought you would be the first out of all of us, to get married."

Elena blinked. "You did?"

"Yeah. I thought you and Stefan—or maybe Damon would sweep you off your feet and marry you in a Vegas chapel, what do I know, but I thought when all this was over and we were safe —safer, anyways— then you would get married and be happy enough for all of us. You do that. Not me."

"There was nothing to be afraid of," Elena said.

"Of course there was!" Caroline almost-shouted, frustrated. "There always is. The world is so frightening, Elena. I was so scared that day. I didn't want to walk down the aisle without my dad. I was afraid I would trip over the words. Fuck, I'd never even lived with anyone before, except in the dorms with you. What did you think—" She squeezed her eyes shut. "I didn't premeditate it or anything. Klaus was just… there." That wasn't exactly the truth, but it would do for Elena: it was the only thing she would understand, Klaus being a passing commodity. If you didn't see the attraction then it was no use, and Elena had never seen the perverse shine of darkness. Her particular hell was a grim and immoral desperation, one you went through with gritted teeth; never the wild ecstasy that Klaus preached.

"But it's Klaus," she said, proving Caroline's point.

"He doesn't judge me," Caroline said with a shrug. "He didn't judge me then. He didn't tell me what I had to do. He just wanted me, not the bride. Not the best friend, or the —survivor, just… me." It sounded stupid, now.

"He doesn't want you," Elena said, frowning and certain.

"Why not?"

Caroline knew why not: she didn't think people like him —tyrants— had hearts. If they did it would make everything more difficult. That was why she couldn't love Damon without trying to redeem him, and why Caroline resented it, because she knew Damon didn't have enough respect for anything to let love be a redemption. "It's just a game for him," Elena said.

"After seven years?"

Elena looked genuinely puzzled by it, bothered. Caroline just sighed. "Look—" she started, but Elena was already halfway through a thought, and then a sentence, "—he's still Klaus, you know."

Yes, Caroline felt like saying; he was still Klaus, and would probably always be Klaus. The question was whether Caroline would remain Caroline much longer, if she was even still the same Caroline Elena had in mind, and that was less certain. Not certain at all.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you," she said instead. "It happened. It was good. You know how it is, with me." She realized she was saying it like an apology: you know how it is, with me; I see something I like and I grab it. But she didn't amend her words.

"I just wish you—hadn't," said Elena. "I don't know how—"

"I'm still the same person, Elena," Caroline said, half-annoyed and half-pleading.

Elena's eyes got sharp. "Are you?"

And that was really what this whole thing was about, wasn't it? It had been so long since even that last time, with Klaus: if it didn't make sense then then maybe Elena had been on the wrong track the whole time, and Elena didn't like to be wrong.

Caroline ducked her head. "I guess not. You're not who you used to be either."

"I didn't sleep with Klaus Mikaelson," Elena said, with a gentle honesty that felt cruel in her mouth.

"I seem to remember you doing a few reprehensible things in your day," Caroline said, because Elena might want to hold that one over her head but damn if Caroline wasn't going to fight back. Sixteen was a ways behind, now. "What about that time you, oh, switched off your humanity and went around in queen bitch mode for months after torching down your own fucking house?"

Elena caught her bottom lip between her teeth, stubborn. "But that was just me, Caroline. Klaus is… he's a wild card. It's not a good idea to—"

"Dangle meat in front of his nose?" Elena winced at the formulation. "For god's sake, Elena, will you just let it go? Believe it or not, we don't all need true love to get into bed with people—or an agenda."

"Maybe you didn't, but he—"

"Thought it was true love?" Caroline exploded, bitter. Yes—maybe she was tired of Elena thinking the only thing she could be to people was a useless pawn. She dared Elena, chin held high. Say it, come on. _Say it._

Elena didn't say it.

Elena didn't say anything; she stayed frozen in the middle of the room, hair flung over one of her shoulders, her face a kaleidoscope of expressions Caroline didn't want to decipher but couldn't help trying to, out of habit. Elena believed in things and she believed they would never stop being true, because she didn't believe in change. She had seen Caroline be weak and second-choice, once, twice, three times, to men who had loved her more than they had Caroline; and out of her pity had grown a loving sort of contempt, soft, understated. To Caroline it felt like a hand pushing her face down in the mud. 

But—she looked at Elena's face, her earnest, youthful, expectant face, impossible to render ugly—but Elena was her friend, and she loved her. 

She sucked in a breath. It was stupid that she felt like crying now, when the fight was almost over. She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair where she had dropped it during their confrontation, to free her arms for gesticulating.

"I need to go," she said, already pushing past Elena.

She had prepared her body for some resistance, was coiled to tear an arm out of Elena's surprisingly strong grip, to tuck her chin down and run for it, even if it seemed juvenile, because she really did need to go, not to look at Elena for a while. If she stayed she felt like she might not remember why they were even friends in the first place. 

In the end it was just two fingers, light as anything, pressing down on the pulse point on her wrist. Caroline didn't stop walking, but she allowed herself to hear Elena speak in a half-whisper, saying, plaintive and decisive at once, "I love you."

Caroline nodded. She wasn't sure if Elena could see it now that Caroline was turning her back on her, walking down the corridor. Elena didn't come after her. Caroline listened for the closing door but there was no sound, only a cushioned silence, like Elena was trying to breathe as unobtrusively as possible, watching her leave.

You couldn't stay mad for long when you were walking in New York: there was just too much that demanded your attention, too many lights, a crowd so dense and disparate that you just _had_ to look, catch a backwards glance of that girl with the blue hair, the man, there, who— and when you turned back you couldn't remember why you had been angry to begin with. Caroline ended up on the platform in 28th St and felt drained instead of righteously furious, even though she had a right to be angry, now that it was her turn. Mostly it made her sad. It was the same feeling that you would have holding two parts of a broken mirror knowing that a shard in the middle had rolled away under the furniture, in the dust, where you wouldn't be able to get it back: at a loss and a bit disappointed, discouraged. She thought: maybe I should just leave while I still can. For her sake and for mine.

But even as she formulated the thought she knew she wouldn't. It was selfish but she _needed_ Elena: needed her like a crutch, like a lifeline, like half of her beating heart and like the best friend that had never been replaced after all. In the end it didn't really matter whether they had changed: right now everything was a matter of life and death and Elena couldn't leave, wouldn't leave even if Caroline asked her to. All this time she had been a phantom limb where Caroline didn't really need it, muscles that she hadn't exercised for years on end, this singular blend of ferocity and kindness like an itch between her shoulder-blades: now she needed it. She couldn't do it without Elena. She wouldn't go two steps without collapsing. Even now —even earlier in the warehouse— she felt out of step, like she was waiting for someone to catch up with her. But it had only been —what, two weeks? And before that Tyler was her anchor. And before that— She cursed herself, reflexive: damn it, Caroline. How about you learn to walk on your own?

Getting to Bonnie's was a long drift and when she got there there was someone in Bonnie's hallway, as though her arrival had been anticipated and prepared for. Caroline hoped it wasn't, in vain: the apartment smelled like incense and there were five witches, not including the one at the door, scattered at different spots in the living-room. One of them, perched on the arm of Bonnie's beautiful red couch, flicked a ringed finger at Caroline and asked Bonnie, "Is this her?"

Bonnie nodded. "Yeah," she said. She gave Caroline an apologetic glance, sorry I knew when you were coming. Caroline felt like she was floundering for a minute: she'd come here to have some time to breathe, to get her balance back, and there she was getting jostled around again. 

Then she got a hold of herself. Tyler was more important. If the witches were there, it meant they were ready to help her, put her in contact with Tyler, Tyler's ghost. She wondered how Bonnie had got in touch with them so fast, how many favors she had collected on.

"We don't have all day," said another of the witches, with thick curly black hair and a downturned mouth. "Let's go." When she moved towards the door the tattoos that covered her arms and neck shimmered and seemed to move. There was a siren curled around her elbow, mouth open as though the city was too oppressive and wouldn't let her breathe. It didn't seem entirely preposterous to Caroline that she might be actually trapped inside the ink, underneath the skin, some fight's supernatural bounty.

The witches took the stairs except the one that had spoken first, so it was just her, Bonnie and Caroline in the tiny elevator, the silence thick and uncomfortable. Bonnie was smoothing her fingers over a talisman Caroline didn't recognize, a bronze bracelet—or maybe it was a necklace—but Caroline couldn't tell what animal it represented, because its head kept disappearing between Bonnie's fingers. They got out of the elevator and stood in the hallway in tense silence until the other witches clambered down the steps in groups of two and threes. This time Caroline looked more closely: they were almost all black or dark-skinned, with thick hair and heavily made-up eyes; they wore leather and silver jewelry that made gong sounds when they moved. They weren't discrete, not by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same they seemed cautious, on the ready. Though they had appeared disorganized at first glance Caroline realized it would have been impossible to cut through them; something invisible bound them at the waist, some small facet of them turned in the same direction, an unchecked compass at the base of their spines. The only remotely similar thing Caroline had ever seen was the wide circle of— Guilt hammered in her throat. She wondered if the witches knew about that — their sisters. But geography was as definite a separation as you could imagine; Elena and her were the perfect example of that, after all.

No words were exchanged. The witch who had ridden with them in the elevator —"Adaeze," Bonnie whispered in her ear—, obviously a leader of some sort, surveyed the others as they spilled out into the street and seemed to scatter there too, leaving in different directions. One of them had hot pink hair and the color exploded in the sun until she reached a motorcycle and climbed on it, hiding the wondrous hair under a helmet. Another girl, who couldn't be older than sixteen, rounded the motorcycle and climbed behind her, fastening her arms at her waist. Caroline heard the rumble of an engine and looked over her shoulder only to see a small black car whiz past them and into the noisy traffic. There were another few minutes of frenzied activity until it was just the three of them in the sun, the street returning to its usual state of regular New York bustle. Adaeze nodded. 

"Follow me," she said.

Her car was parked in a nearby street, one of those small and winding alleyways you wouldn't imagine actually existed in New York; a Fiat, yellow and small and perfectly unimpressive. The crushing foreboding in Caroline's chest she hadn't even realized was there let up a little. 

"Where are we going?" she asked.

Adaeze didn't even dignify her with a look. Out of a tacit understanding between her and Bonnie, Caroline got relegated to the backseat, where she squeezed her limbs without complaining. Adaeze twisted her key —it was entangled in a mess of charms, little kistchy things Caroline didn't know whether to believe were actually magic— in the ignition.

She asked a few more questions before catching on to the fact that it was useless since Adaeze —or Bonnie, for that matter, though in her case it might be that she just didn't know— had no intention of answering any of them. It took them about thirty minutes to leave Manhattan and they waded into Harlem, the décor sparsing out in the window. Caroline imagined how incongruous the car must look in those long, dark streets. When the adrenaline of being ambushed by an entire (or so she could only assume) coven of witches settled she remembered the fight with Elena and tipped her head against the window. She'd come to Bonnie for support, and now— well, now they were in a car with an unresponsive witch and Caroline had no idea where they were going. Maybe she was just the vampire sacrifice of the week, she thought —wouldn't have been the first time.

Point was—point was, the argument was still real, and all that had hurt before she'd left the hotel room still hurt, and Tyler was still dead. Though at least Bonnie was here —not exactly forthcoming either, sure, or maybe she was talking to Adaeze in some secret kind of morse code Caroline couldn't catch; but there, real and alive, for all she bore the portal to an unimaginable world inside her chest. It felt good just to be near her. Caroline listened to the blood pulsing in her throat and it was like a lullaby, a strong, almost-healthy rhythm lulling her to sleep. She let herself doze off.

When she came to the sky was cloudy and the car was stopped. Someone shook her shoulder. She raised her head; it was Adaeze, looking down at her with an unreadable expression. She pulled back to let Caroline get out of the car and examine their surroundings.

"Where are we?" Caroline asked.

Adaeze tilted her head, acknowledging the question, but didn't answer. They were still in Harlem as far as Caroline could see, at the very edge of the neighborhood and possibly of the city, an abandoned industrial wasteland dominated by concrete and rough, unworked steel. The ghosts of factories were hovering in the distance, but the only lights were miles away. Here everything seemed to have been abandoned, or rather fled from, as though some nameless evil had whispered to them that they better chose somewhere else to plant their roots. Caroline shivered. Vampire or not, this wasn't her kind of place.

When she gave a second look the small, ant-like figures of the witches detached over the foamy late-afternoon obscurity. Pink Hair was leaning against her motorcycle, talking earnestly with the young witch. In the peculiar light Caroline noticed shots of silver —studs on belts and boots, piercings, jewelry— that she hadn't seen before, melted in the plain city sunlight. 

"How did night fall so fast?" she asked to no-one in particular.

She wasn't expecting an answer this time, but a hand cupped her elbow and before she could freak out Bonnie was behind her, slim and smiling. "You arrived at the edge of decline," she said, which seemed kind of prophetic for Bonnie, but she just smiled from the side of her mouth and explained, "I'm a specialist in in-betweens now." It sort of made sense.

But for once being the ambiguity of her position didn't seem to bother Bonnie all that much. From what Caroline had seen of her in the city she did her best to keep out of it, magic and supernatural vendettas and all the trouble that came with them —seemed to consider it enough that she was the anchor and couldn't really do anything about it, even now that she was better. But here she advanced confidently in the night and held her head high, back ramrod-straight, exuding a confidence the witches seemed to feel like the slash of a whip. They straightened too. There was a hum in the atmosphere, everyone coming to attention, that finally settled into silence.

"I need your help," said Bonnie.

They obviously already knew that, since they'd all driven to this honestly kind of creepy place at six in the afternoon, but Pink Hair still crossed her arms and scowled. 

"We don't owe you anything," she said.

"No," Bonnie agreed, "you don't. I guess I could always go ask La Maria."

Pink Hair scowled even harder at the name. "That bitch doesn't even know about you. Why should she care?"

Adaeze was watching on like this was all a rather boring sideshow which she had no intention of interrupting. Caroline wondered if she was really as much a leader as she'd seemed.

Bonnie's eyes turned to steel. "It always helps to have the Anchor on your side," she said, and Caroline could feel the capital A in her voice. "Isn't that why you agreed to come here tonight?"

"We thought it was something actually _important_ ," Pink Hair spit, her voice full of contempt, "life or death stuff, not just doing some newbie vampire's bidding." 

Caroline would have objected to being called a newbie —sometimes it felt like she'd been a vampire forever, like there was nothing else she could revert to, her humanity wiped off by the smooth sheathing of her fangs into the flesh of her gums, the strength inside her. It was probably true, but it didn't change the fact: by vampire —and witch, apparently— standards it hadn't been long, not long enough to even test that immortal barrier. She was too annoyed by the Originals in general, not to mention Katherine, to ever be awed at their having lived through the centuries, and Stefan was too homely by now to feel like the centurial trooper he actually was, but once you thought about it it really was humbling, to be in the presence of people who had lived this long, seen this much. 

Pink Hair threw a glance her way and it was very clear; to her Caroline was a blood-sucking parasite, no more no less. Caroline half-wanted to rip her throat out, just a little, to show her how wrong she was, but that wouldn't really be conducive to her and Bonnie getting the help they needed. Caroline had to admit, deep inside herself, that she would probably have been able to find Tyler's murderer without his help, be it only because she would move mountains, would not rest until she had them under heel —but she wanted to talk to him so bad. Maybe if she'd known Bonnie would have to go to such lengths, she thought —but no. She was still too selfish, and it was too important.

"We'll do it." It was Adaeze, who Caroline had forgotten was even there, standing quietly by Bonnie's side; she hadn't raised her voice a decibel. Caroline amended herself —she definitely _was_ the leader.

Pink Hair opened her mouth like she was going to argue, but Adaeze said, "Karen," trenchant and definitive, and she fell into sullen silence.

Adaeze turned to Bonnie. "We'll help your friend," she told Bonnie, not looking at Caroline at all. "In exchange you have to promise us that you'll help us in turn, if we need it, and that we'll be the only coven you're in contact with."

Bonnie frowned. "Exclusivity?"

"La Maria is powerful," Adaeze said. "We don't need her to have even more power, and the ancestors don't like free agents. There are rules to magic."

The color drained from Bonnie's face, a little; but only Caroline, who had known her since they were children, seemed to notice. "Yeah," she said. "A lot of them."

"What do you want from us?"

Bonnie looked at Adaeze strangely, her gaze oblique. "I told you about it before. Just a manifestation spell."

Where they were situated in front of them in a loose half-circle, the witches crowded closer together and started talking in a dense murmur. Adaeze regarded them placidly. The setting sun hit the silver buckle of her belt.

"Breaching the space between our world and the other side is never a good idea," she told Bonnie. "You should know that better than anyone."

"I do," Bonnie said. Caroline thought she would explain about Caroline's circumstances, why she needed to see Tyler and talk to him so bad, but she didn't elaborate. When Caroline opened her mouth to supply the information herself Bonnie's hand closed on her forearm. Just as Caroline was about to protest, she was distracted by the buzzing of her phone in her back pocket. 

While Adaeze and Bonnie were engaged in what looked like a staring contest, she slid the phone out of her pocket. The message was from Elena. Caroline hesitated, but curiosity won out and she opened it; it said, _WHERE ARE YOU?_ in all capitals, shouty and urgent. When Caroline scrolled down there was another message, about half an hour before, that just read, _i'm sorry._ Caroline didn't know how to answer; she looked down at the message for a handful of seconds, then shut off her phone and put it back in her pocket. Later. She'd deal with it later. 

When she looked back up Adaeze had joined the circle of witches, and they were preparing the ritual, moving slowly and purposefully, a dedicated energy behind every one of their movements. Caroline watched as Adaeze led two of the witches to the yellow Fiat and opened the trunk, from which she took out an armload of candles which looked like they had been bought at Bath&Beyond as well as what Caroline supposed were other witchy ingredients, rope and books and long sticks of colored chalk like the ones Tyler had explained to her were used in tagging to delineate the contours back during his street art phase. 

Bonnie's head was ducked; she looked exhausted. "You okay?" Caroline asked. "Sorry to make you do all this."

Bonnie seemed to snap out of a daze. "Huh? No, it's— they said they'd do it. Witches keep their word."

"Is that, like, from the secret handbook or something?" Caroline asked, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth, but Bonnie took it surprisingly seriously. 

"Something like that, yeah."

For lack of something to say, Caroline surveyed the witches' progress. They were walking across the wasteland, their arms laden with what they had collected in the Fiat. Caroline wondered how it could all have fit in the small trunk, if there was some spell to help them cram it all in. Probably not; if Bonnie was too be believed, the ancestors likely wouldn't appreciate being called on for the equivalent of making a box bigger on the inside.

"You're not helping them?" Caroline asked. It was strange, in a way: she was so used to Bonnie being the one bent on her wax and chalk —even though, she couldn't help but notice, Bonnie's materials had usually been much more traditional, like something out of a fairytale—, and now she was just standing there with her arms crossed, looking faintly dissatisfied with it all.

"They wouldn't want me to," Bonnie said as they started following the witches across the gravel. Caroline didn't insist.

They were led into what Caroline could immediately tell was a graveyard. As it was, it didn't look like one at all: it was only a gated part of the greater industrial waste, and the graves, it they could be called that, were either slabs of concrete or just spots on the ground delimitated with jagged stones and makeshift crosses held together by wire and hard black rubber, sometimes even frayed rope. They were disposed in a broken circle, all pointing towards an uncertain center, all twenty or twenty-five of them; when the witches got to their level they dropped their bravado and bowed their heads as one would upon entering a church. Caroline almost expected to see them genuflecting.

Two of them, Karen's companion and another young girl with ripped fishnets and a spiked nose-ring, crouched and started to organize the candles on the graves. It all seemed a little extensive for a manifestation spell, but it wasn't like Caroline was an expert in magic, and besides that the witches' cooperation was uncertain at best, so it was probably better not to antagonize them. Caroline couldn't help but let her thoughts drift back to Elena: was she worrying? No —of course she was worrying. The question was, how much? Caroline bit her lip. She turned to Bonnie; they both needed distracting.

"You used to be able to do this alone," she said, nodding to the witches. The rest of them were hanging back; Karen was tracing a pentagram on the ground in hot pink. 

The silence stretched for so long that Caroline started thinking that maybe Bonnie hadn't heard her. But—

"Yeah," she said eventually. She kept staring straight ahead, not really looking at the witches or their preparations but beyond them, where Caroline imagined ghosts were squirming restlessly, maybe sensing that they were about to be pulled of their inoffensive peace. "I'm not as strong as I used to be. I need the ancestors. And the coven won't send only one of theirs with me—with us. They don't trust me."

"Why can't the ancestors just lend you power?"

"They don't trust me either. I'm not part of the coven, part of the family; I'm not their daughter. They know that I'm the anchor. They're afraid of what I might do with that power."

"Are you?"

Something shut down in Bonnie: for a terrifying second she seemed to wither under Caroline's eyes, her skin getting thin and papery, as though she were going to become a ghost again. Caroline held her breath until she recovered the appearance of flesh and bone.

"Sometimes," Bonnie said, her voice colorless.

Now Adaeze was turning towards them and without words she beckoned them closer, showed them to the complete pentagram. She said quietly the name of each witch —Malia, Soo Jin, Hélène and Karen's young friend, Remedios— and they placed themselves on the arms of the crossed star. No matter how modern their clothes were, how edgy their piercings and tattoos; in the gloomy light of the in-between time curtailing day and night they all seemed solemn and powerful, that line of khôl under their eyes a priestess's mask. The pink line of the pentagram started glowing; the air was humming with magic. Even on the sidelines, Bonnie looked like she was in pain, and Caroline assumed it was the fact of being in such a close proximity with magic and yet unable to practice it, to connect. Then again those things tended to be impenetrable, so maybe it was something else.

Caroline breathed in as they started chanting. It ought to have been hot, the sticky warmth that New York took on in the early evening, but there was a deep chill in the air that made Caroline shiver. This time he was going to show. It was Tyler, he couldn't not: he was loyal and generous and he always, always kept his promises. Caroline had been the changing one, not him. He was going to show, this time. He had to.

Bonnie's fingers curled around hers; it made Caroline look up, back at the witches. With a whoosh, the flames swelled in their cradle of scented wax. The smell of pine and artificial sweetener rose in the air. In the distance the yellow Fiat had shrunk to a tiny square of reflected light, like a lightning bug. Adaeze spoke louder and louder with every word; she seemed to know every word by heart, unlike Bonnie who had always been bent over grimoires, learning even as she tried to save their lives and succeeded over and over, every time. One day Caroline might stop feeling guilty for taking Bonnie for granted every time for so long, but it wasn't today.

"They know the spell by heart," Bonnie said absently, as though she was reading Caroline's thoughts. 

As she said the words her grip on Caroline's hand tightened, enough to hurt. Caroline swore under her breath. One of the witches —Soo Jin, with the supernatural blue eyes and the tattoos curling from mid-thigh to the base of her chin, fantastical creatures in bright colored ink—, distracted, flicked her an irritated glance and frowned. Bonnie didn't stop crushing Caroline's hand; maybe she hadn't even noticed. She was looking right ahead, eyes bugging out like she was having a stroke. She was trembling; it seemed like there was something tethered in her stomach, a hook, trying to pull her forward into the pentagram. Caroline bit down on her lip to keep from crying out.

Panic was surging in her chest and her fangs had pierced through the skin of her lip, blood trickling into the inside of her mouth, down the enamel of her teeth. Caroline felt nauseous. But— This is working, she thought, because the witches' eyes were glassy and dark, doll's eyes, a deep well of strange sleep nothing could have woken them out of, and their hands were linked and welded together and they were beautiful in that intense terrifying way that only came from magic, so it had to be working, didn't it? She tried to remember the few other times ghosts had materialized in front of them, back in Mystic Falls: Alaric, Anna, Mason Lockwood, skittish at first, their eyes wide and terrified at having been roused until they settled in a blank sort of acceptance. Caroline couldn't imagine how it must feel, to be pulled out of what had to be an at least somewhat painless rest back into the harsh realm of the living, corralled by witch-power. Realizing you were dead, and then having to go back.

But she needed him, Tyler. If he didn't come back and tell her something, anything, what she had to do, she would rend to pieces, she just knew it. This panic was just a foreboding, a first taste of what was to come if she was left alone without the man who —who had lived with her every day for seven years, for one, and loved her and died because of her, in an oblique, complicated way. If it wasn't for her—sure, the werewolf gene ran in the family, but she was the magnet for trouble. It didn't even matter that she hated herself for it, for his death, because he would come back and tell her it was okay. That there was nothing she could do now, except avenging him. After that there would be peace for both of them. Right and wrong, wasn't that—

There was a startled cry, then a heavy thump. When Caroline looked up the girl, Remedios, had collapsed on the ground.

—

The witches all ran to her in a disorganized stampede. Even Adaeze, who had been perfectly expressionless all this while, was crouched near the girl's body, taking her pulse. Caroline felt frozen. She watched Adaeze's fingers, two on Remedios's wrist and two on her thigh: tap, tap, tap. She was alive. Bonnie joined them around the body, even though there were too many people and Karen was opening her arms to corral them backwards, saying, "She needs to breathe." Because that was what you did, wasn't it? When someone— You went to them. But Caroline felt dirty, and she couldn't help but think, irrationally maybe: this is my fault. I killed her. 

"You didn't kill her," said Adaeze when she looked up and her eyes met Caroline's, straight and hard and black. It felt like she was saying: you might have, but you didn't. Caroline nodded.

She came closer. Malia and Hélène were each holding one of Remedios's hands. They raised their heads when they felt Caroline approaching, glaring like lionesses guarding a cub. "What happened?" Caroline asked.

"It hasn't been long since she's in full possession of her powers," Adaeze said slowly, sensibly. "She's not used to this kind of ritual. It's heavy on the mind."

Karen didn't seem to be as forgiving. She was the coven's resident troublemaker, Caroline realized when Karen balled her fists at her sides and opened her mouth to speak; the heavy-hitter. But she didn't head towards Caroline. All this time, apart from that hateful glance at the beginning, it had seemed like Caroline didn't exist to her. The others looked merely uneasy with her presence. 

Karen stalked in Bonnie's direction. "You," she said hotly, pointing a finger at Bonnie's chest. Her pink quiff quivered as she bobbed her head in anger. "It's your fault, bringing a fucking vampire on our grounds." She turned to Adaeze. "I don't give a shit if she's the anchor, she can go to La Maria for all I care—"

Adaeze gave her a cold look. "Don't yell, Karen. Remedios is unwell."

Karen looked temporarily chastised. There was only one question burning on Caroline's tongue: did you find him? Where is he? He might still be concealed behind one last veil of darkness, in the thick syrupy night: either that the witches hadn't completed the ritual or that they were vindictive, and didn't want to show him to her. She felt like sprinting to the center of the pentagram and pawing the air like a madwoman. She held her tongue. 

Remedios was still in her line of sight, Hélène bent over her. She had showy cascading red hair, like the Helen in the legend; Caroline wondered if it was on purpose. Remedios opened one eye and looked straight at Bonnie, who was standing a few feet away, turning her back at her. She said, "I saw the other side." Bonnie turned around and they all saw the pity in Remedios's eyes, like she had just realized what Bonnie went through everyday as the Charon of the supernatural world. Bonnie winced and turned back around, her mouth already half-open to talk to Adaeze. Caroline could understand. Pity was repellent; pity was useless and bothersome. Kindness was an anti-acid, but pity didn't serve any purpose and made your throat itch with tears.

"She just needs some rest," Hélène said. "We've got to bring her back to her mom."

"Thank God it's not a school night," Malia said. It sounded strange coming out of her mouth because she didn't look like she believed in God, or like she was even out of high school herself. 

Remedios yawned and stretched, leonine. "I'm fine," she said unconvincingly. "I can do the ritual again if you want." Her eyes skittered across the cemetery, the candles, then bounced on several of her fellow witches. "But—"

"Not tonight," said Adaeze, and Caroline couldn't help the numbing disappointment that crashed on her with all its weight. "Karen, can you take her home?" 

"Why me?" Karen asked. She shot a look of apology to Remedios, but it was clear she wanted to stay to yell at Bonnie some more, that she was spoiling for a fight. 

"You came with her," Adaeze said simply. She was a good leader. "The air will do her good." The motorcycle was pushed against an overturned crate not far, gleaming like an insect's shell in the night. The candles hadn't stopped burning when Remedios had collapsed; they projected their sickly glow on the metal.

"I guess," Karen said reluctantly. She hitched up the sleeves of her leather jacket. "Let's go," she said, and presented a hand to Remedios to help her up, but there was tenderness in her voice. Bonnie remembered how being a witch had meant family for Bonnie too, once upon a time, before everyone was killed. She thought Adaeze might respect that. But maybe Bonnie hadn't told them that story. It wasn't a particularly fun story to tell, after all.

They watched Karen and Remedios disappear in the distance, silent. Remedios was leaning on Karen, their arms threaded together. They didn't look like sisters, because they didn't look alike at all, but there was this undercurrent of quiet affection between them, the good-natured ribbing, the wonder and worry. Caroline had never minded being an only child, but right now she kind of did. Of course she had Elena and Bonnie, and that was nearly the same thing, what with how unconditional their friendship had turned to be, but—still. The last ten years didn't make for a great track record.

"I'm sorry," Adaeze said to Bonnie once the motorcycle had roared away, the engine noise reduced to a slight, fading hum.

Bonnie nodded. She still looked exhausted. With her left hand she rubbed the bony, skeletal wrist of her right. The bronze pendant on her bracelet glimmering weakly.

"Why?" Caroline asked. "What happened?"

Adaeze met her gaze head on. She wasn't afraid of anything but she wasn't particularly kind either. "It didn't work," she said.

Caroline felt cold foreboding settle at the back of her neck, but she refused to believe it. There was no reason for it not to work. She turned around, silently begging a denial of Malia and Soo Jin, or even just an explanation, but they avoided her eyes. "What do you mean it didn't work? It has to work. How can it not work?"

"We didn't find him," Adaeze said.

Bonnie touched her arm. "Sometimes—" she started, but Caroline shook her off.

"You didn't find him? That's bullshit. He's there. I know he's there."

"He's not there," Adaeze said.

"That's—" Caroline wished she were a witch so she could do it herself, go and find him, and show them. Trust Bonnie to choose a coven that couldn't even practice right. Caroline knew she was being unfair, but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything—hadn't for a while. Except Tyler. Without Tyler nothing made sense, she couldn't go on.

"Did you look everywhere?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second. "The other side—"

"We know about the other side," Adaeze said. "We looked. He wasn't there. I'm sorry."

She didn't sound sorry, Caroline thought vindictively. Or rather she did, but not nearly sorry _enough_. But she was human. She ought to know—she ought to know, what death meant when it was definitive. Unless maybe Elena had been right that time, and there was a purgatory for them too.

Caroline breathed in, to keep her voice from trembling. "Did you look everywhere?" She didn't even know what it meant, _everywhere_. Maybe the other side wasn't even a real place, just darkness upon darkness, scary and unending. Maybe it didn't have boundaries or walls, nothing to delimit it.

Adaeze nodded. "We did. That's why Remedios collapsed, because the ritual took so long. We looked everywhere we could think of, to make sure he wasn't hiding, or lost." She looked at Caroline. "I like to be thorough," she said, as though she was afraid Caroline would think it was a favor.

Something stuck. She said, _lost_ and the reality of it hit Caroline like a freight train —that Tyler was lost, that she wouldn't see him again, never— and she just—lost it. It was unthinkable. But it was true, wasn't it? This was the kind of shit people flipped their switches for. Suddenly Caroline understood, sneered at that old feeling she'd thought was bravery but was really the absence of a greater pain; thought, there's nothing I would like more than to be off right about now. She couldn't control it. She focused on the tight thrum of blood in Bonnie's jugular not to hear Adaeze's words, and it took her over. 

She had always known —it was hard to ignore— that there was something _feral_ about being a vampire, something deeper than the panicked hunger she'd felt when she'd woken up that first time. It had been horrific, sure—but she hadn't had the time to get really hungry, powerfully and scaringly hungry before Stefan and Elena had rescued her, explained the rules to her. And she'd known that vampires were real beforehand. What she was feeling now was what she imagined a random college student whose neck had been snapped after one of Damon's drinking binges would feel like. She was just so _mad_. She felt like she could have struck down mountains if she'd tried.

And it was beating in her, like a heart, like a drum, it was pounding and inescapable and painful and so loud she couldn't hear anything over the roar of it. She felt her nails break the skin of her palms, her fangs unsheath. She felt herself whir through the air. Everything belonged to her but death, and death she could reclaim. Adaeze's throat between her hands. She was wearing a necklace made of colored wood. The skin near her jugular was black and smooth and smelled like perfume and sweat and magic. Like fizzy water. Like lemonade. Caroline bit down. 

The thing was—well, she'd never been all that good with instinct control, had she? That was what the whole Klaus thing was about, and it was significant, even if she didn't want to admit it to herself—otherwise she wouldn't have been tracking the guy ten years later, trying to find out if he'd killed her husband over her. This was instinct too. Now the witch wasn't so proud. She couldn't find Tyler. Had she even looked? Had she looked like a woman in love would? Caroline had been in love with Tyler. She still was. Maybe she wasn't, but she needed him, and it amounted to the same thing, more or less. The witch should've known that. Pain made her so hungry. Pain made her want to drink until there was nothing else in her brain but that red ecstasy, bright burning sparks against the back of her eyelids. There was blood everywhere, in her mouth, on her skin, her hands, and it felt good. Nothing had felt as good in a long time, though Elena had come close in a different way, the soothing honey of her kindness. But Elena was mad at her now, because of a mistake she had made a long, long time ago and never really regretted afterwards. So this was what was left. Blood.

She heard it behind her—a tense second of bewilderment, surprise, shock, horror; then Bonnie crying out, and something hit Caroline's back. A spell. Malia had her nails in Caroline's shoulder. Bad idea, little girl, Caroline thought, and flung her onto the ground. She had no pity for these people. Humans died all the time. She licked Adaeze's blood on her lips. There was no vervain in it, or any other concoction that would have made Caroline's lips burn. In a way it reassured her a little, at the same time as it kindled her hunger. She thought, they don't know what they're doing at all. Maybe they were wrong about Tyler. 

It could—it ought to—have calmed her, but she was too far gone. When Hélène tried to hit her with a lead pipe she'd grabbed off the ground Caroline whipped it off her hands, snarling, then to punish her scratched the long and bloody mark of a claw on her throat. She'd learn. They all needed to learn. Bonnie flung herself in front of her, "Caroline!" but Caroline's arm caught her windpipe and she fell backwards, winded. Caroline felt the mercy dwindle down in her bones. She didn't care about the witches. She wouldn't kill Bonnie, but—

"Enough," Adaeze said.

Caroline growled at her, fangs out, her body taut as she jumped and slammed her down onto one of the concrete graves. The spell was still pulling at her skin but it didn't matter. She scraped her teeth across Adaeze's throat, surprised at her own control, and for the first time since they'd met she smelled fear on Adaeze, dirty and pervasive. Finally, she couldn't help but think. Finally she understands. 

"Give me a reason not to kill you," she whispered. There was no reason; that was the trick. Caroline hadn't known where the line was until she'd crossed it, and now she was standing on the other side with no room in her heart for repentance.

Someone's hands on her shoulders, but she twisted out of their grip. There was the sickening sound of bones breaking. Caroline didn't care—couldn't, even if she'd tried. 

"What do you want?" Adaeze asked, trying to keep her voice level and failing.

"I know you're lying," Caroline said. The pain was still gnawing at her, stronger than her bloodlust, stronger than everything. It was only a matter of time before it broke down Caroline's barriers. "This isn't the only thing you can try. Tyler isn't lost forever, it doesn't work like that. There are resurrection spells."

"The ancestors will never let us," Adaeze croaked, and Caroline was grateful that she didn't even try to convince her that it wasn't a good idea, that it was black magic, even though she knew it was just because Adaeze was afraid.

"Force them," she said. "Force them, or I'll kill you."

Adaeze closed her eyes, breathing through her nose, fear still seeping out of her in claustrophobic waves; seemed to consider it. Her body was tight in Caroline's grip —it smelled delicious and Caroline couldn't help but lose her head, a little, picturing how easy it would be to just burrow her head into that soft neck and drink until there was nothing left, until she was full, no room for memories, for—

This moment of distraction was enough. When she looked back down Adaeze was mumbling under her breath, grimoire Latin, and Caroline felt the spell growing stronger and meaner; her strength was slipping away from her. She tried to hold it in, to bite down and kill the witch once and for all. She was so angry. If it went away there would be nothing left.

She heard Bonnie scramble to her knees behind her and join in the spell. Belatedly Malia, Soo Jin and Hélène did as well. Caroline had to bit her lip not to whimper. Her grip on Adaeze faltered until eventually all it took was a push and she was lying down on the ground, incapable of getting up, the witches towering above her. Dust got in her eyes; once she started to cry trying to stop was useless, her tears —not tears of sadness: of frustration, of rage— humiliatingly warm on her skin. The spell felt like she was being flayed alive, like her skin was being painstakingly pulled away from her bones, inch by inch. She tried to scream, couldn't.

It went on forever, pulling the energy directly from the marrow of her bones, sucking every atom of power out of her, the witches' dark eyes riveted on her. Her face shifted back to its human form, her fangs slid back in; it felt unnatural and _wrong_ , like maybe she was losing them forever. Not now, Caroline thought—pleaded. There was a time when she could have wanted it, but it was long gone now. Bonnie —Bonnie would've understood. Why was she doing this? Couldn't she see? Caroline would never have killed her, not in a million years. Why wasn't she helping Caroline, why were her hands up, like Caroline was one of the smirking adversaries they had fought together? She opened her mouth to speak but only blood came out, stale and nauseating.

"Don't—" she heard Bonnie's voice, cut off, altered, then the hard edge of a boot in her stomach. She vomited more blood; it dribbled on her chin, rank and acid but still addicting. Nails on her throat. She blacked out when her neck snapped. 

When she came to Hélène was looking her in the face, sneering, from the other side of a new pentagram. This one was green. Hélène was holding her arm gingerly against her chest, something wincing when she moved; Caroline guessed it was broken and felt vindictive joy, which soon dwindled into weariness.

"Hey," Hélène called to the others, who seemed to be having some sort of pow-wow to the side, "she's awake. Why can't they ever stay dead?"

Caroline's head was killing her. The memories of what she'd done flowed back in a rush. She felt ashamed, but most of all she felt desperate, the loss of Tyler eating away at her. She looked at Adaeze moving in her direction, thought: I would kill her in a blink if it meant I could have Tyler back. Klaus would have been proud.

"I'm sorry," she said to Bonnie. "I would never have hurt you." Bonnie nodded, her face hidden in the darkness, unreadable. She would forgive Caroline, though, in time. She always did.

Adaeze crouched in front of her. "Don't try to get out," she said, looking wary, as though Caroline was going to try to jump her again. She was right to be careful, Caroline thought a little petulantly. "Don't make any sudden movements. We will kill you."

Caroline laughed. "You just try," she said. "You're not the first to make that promise."

She was afraid; she felt cold and weak. But she wouldn't show it. She would make Tyler proud now, for once, even if he couldn't see her. 

Behind Adaeze, Malia growled and took a menacing step forward. Adaeze stopped her with her arm. Malia just glared at Caroline; Caroline smiled back at her, fangs out. Then she turned back to Adaeze. 

"Give him to me," she said, trying not to make it sound too much like she was begging, even though she was. "I'll do anything you want."

"You have nothing I want," Adaeze said calmly. Her throat was still bleeding, just a little trickle that smelled heavenly. Caroline felt dizzy with want.

"Don't you want to be immortal?" She leaned in. "I'll turn you. Then you can do anything you please, frolic around the city shoving it in La Maria's face or lunch on all of Manhattan, I don't care. Just one spell. Can you imagine being a vampire witch? That has to be pretty awesome. That has to be something."

"Being like you doesn't appeal to me," Adaeze said, not unkindly. "I have no desire to be immortal."

"Everyone wants to be immortal."

Bonnie turned away in the darkness. Caroline couldn't help but track her with her eyes, her slim, proud silhouette.

"Will you try anything if I let you go?"

Caroline thought about it. "No," she lied. She played the scene in her head: Adaeze would break the pentagram and Caroline would snap Soo Jin's neck. She'd have to act fast. The terror would be enough to force them to do the spell. Then if they wanted to bring their little witch back Caroline wouldn't begrudge them.

"Magic always has a price," Bonnie said in a dark voice, like she had so many times before. "Especially this kind of magic." In the past Caroline had nodded sententiously; in the past Caroline had been on the side of the good guys. But now she was a free electron—the solvable for x. 

Caroline looked her in the eyes. _She'll never trust you again,_ Elena had said. Well, she would take that chance. "This time I'm willing to pay it," she said.

Bonnie flinched. Adaeze tilted her head.

"Death hurts," she said, "but it's not the end of things. If I —if we— bring back your husband he won't be the man you remember."

"He wasn't a man in the first place." It had never felt as true as it did now. 

"He won't be that either. He won't be a ghost. He won't be anything you can identify. He will be full of darkness." 

Caroline thought about Jeremy Gilbert and Bonnie dying for him, to bring him back; thought, am I not worthy enough to do it? Is the exchange not equal? Jeremy was full of darkness too, scary and intangible, but he was allowed to survive.

"There's darkness in everyone," she said instead, tipping her chin up. "I'll deal."

"Not that kind of darkness. That kind rots and sullies."

Adaeze looked so sserious; Caroline laughed. "You don't think we're already sullied? What kind of world do you live in? We've killed —we've killed so many people, whether we wanted it or not, and we'll never go to jail for it, we'll never feel the consequences. I'm pretty sure you did some murdering of your own. You think we still live in the world of light and darkness, justice and peace? Get a grip."

"You don't believe that," Bonnie said. 

"No, _you_ don't believe that," Caroline retorted. "But it's the truth. Why can't I have Tyler back, when you got back your boyfriend and Elena her brother? Where's the justice in that?"

Bonnie blanched. "That—was a mistake. I died for it."

"And I'll die for Tyler." Caroline grinned, but it was twisted and desperate. She thought about messages from Elena accumulating in her voicemail. "An eye for an eye. That's how it's worked all this time."

"I won't bring back your husband," Adaeze said.

Caroline stood up in the pentagram, her heels digging in the dirt. "Fine. Then I'll ask someone else. Who's that Maria you were talking about?" Fierce anger flashed on Hélène's face. "What, you think I don't listen when you pretend I'm not there? Bonnie told you how nice and docile I was, is that it? Well, tough luck. I'm done with being nice."

"Tyler wouldn't want you to—" Bonnie started, but Caroline interrupted her. 

"What the fuck do _you_ know about what Tyler would've wanted? You don't know shit. You barely knew him at all. Are you the one who spent seven years married to him? Are you the one who watched him turn and hunted with him? Are you the one who lived with him, and loved him, and nursed him when he was sick?" Bonnie paled. "I didn't think so." Caroline realized distantly that she was yelling. "Tyler would've wanted to _live_. He deserved to live."

"It's not your fault, it's—"

"Stop telling me it's not my fault! You don't know anything! Stop lying! I'm not asking you the moon. Just bring back Tyler. Then we can be done, Bonnie."

"I don't want to be done," Bonnie said. She had her fists balled at her sides. "I want to help you."

Caroline laughed again. It hurt her throat. "Yeah, and look how that's worked out." She opened her arms to invite Bonnie to take in the situation: Caroline in the pentagram, Adaeze with her blood-sticky neck, Hélène's broken arm, Bonnie and the bruises under her skin from Caroline's arm across her windpipe, ready to bloom. "Give him back to me. Give him back to me. He has to be _somewhere_."

Her cheeks were wet, and Adaeze had a horrible look of pity on her face. Caroline wanted to hit her. 

"Sometimes death is just the end," Adaeze whispered. "That's how it has to be. We close the door and we mourn. Our dead are somewhere, you're right, just not somewhere we can get to them. They look over us. They love us." She reached a hand through the protection and touched Caroline's cheek. Caroline didn't even think to tear her wrist to shreds. "Tyler is gone, but you're still here."

"That wasn't the deal," Caroline said, her voice breaking. All of a sudden she felt so tired, so terribly tired. "We were supposed to be together forever. We got the blood-sucking and the hunger and the fear. In exchange we got to be together forever. That was the deal."

"Yes," Adaeze nodded. "It's unfair. The universe doesn't keep its promises."

There was a moment of silence. Hélène looked disgusted, and Soo Jin and Malia were holding hands. Bonnie came closer. She kneeled in the dust, but didn't reach through the pentagram.

"Will you hurt us if I let you go?" Adaeze asked softly. 

"No," Caroline said.

Adaeze hesitated. Caroline could feel it, in the way her eyes flitted over her face, trying to detect a lie, and in the absent-minded twitch of her fingers. Of course she wasn't as composed as she seemed. No one was. But—

"Alright," she said eventually. She called the other witches close, except Bonnie, and they muttered in Latin for a few minutes. In the old pentagram —the one for Tyler—, the candles lit back up reflexively. Malia seemed reluctant but she did what Adaeze asked without complaining.

Caroline felt something loosening. There was a flare of dust around her, and for a minute she was in a small, cluttered world of mist and dirt and she couldn't see anything, not the slight shine of sweat on Bonnie's bare arms and not Adaeze's moving lips, not the silent tombs and not the horizon. She thought about Elena. She thought, if I had died for Tyler I would have missed Elena. That was when she realized she wasn't thinking about it anymore —dying for Tyler, in exchange for his life—, that the time for that had passed.

"Thank you," she said when the dust abated. 

Malia snorted. Her hands were twitchy too; she shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack, angrily, and lit it between her lips, a red glowing circle that made her pupils orange and wolf-like. Caroline could've laughed at the irony, but instead she just felt sad.

Adaeze rested a hand on her shoulder. Caroline had to fight the urge to shake her off. She stood up in the pentagram. Adaeze's hand slid on her arm. 

"You will heal," said Adaeze.

Caroline thought about Klaus. "Unlikely," she said.

She stepped out of the pentagram. An invisible construction, tightly woven magical threads somewhere in the vicinity, collapsed around her—or at least she thought it did, just like she had thought she could feel Tyler in Bonnie's living-room, breathing words she couldn't hear to spur her along. Survive. Survive. 

"Scars are valuable," Bonnie said when she sidled up to her. Caroline frowned. Scars were ugly, even the invisible ones, they ruined your figure. But she didn't say anything.

Tendrils of light were dripping in the horizon, dawn before its time. Bonnie took a step closer as though she were going to hug Caroline but didn't. They looked each other in the eye, and Caroline felt like they were meeting again. Maybe it was more real this time, truer to who they were now. Bonnie pushed Caroline's hair behind her ear, matted with dirt and blood. She wasn't mad.

"You look like shit," she said, her voice tender. "You should take a shower."

Caroline shrugged, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Yeah, that's in my schedule between 'ancient spells' and 'flying to Peru to avenge Tyler'."

"You'll—" Bonnie's fingers stuttered on the lobe of Caroline's ear. "You'll let me know how it goes, right?"

"Of course," Caroline said. "We'll call you every day."

Bonnie made a face, you won't, and Caroline laughed. "Do you have work tomorrow?" she asked.

"Yeah. I should go."

"Don't worry about me," Caroline said. 

"I will," Bonnie said, like a promise. Then, softer, "I really wanted to help you. I'm sorry." Caroline just nodded.

This time Bonnie did reach for Caroline and they hugged, close as lovers, Bonnie's fingers digging painfully in the flesh at the small of Caroline's back. "You bitch," she whispered in Caroline's ear. "You freaked me out. Don't do this again."

Caroline hugged back just as hard. "I'm sorry," she said. She didn't mean she was sorry for what she'd done, because she wasn't; but she _was_ sorry to have frightened Bonnie. Maybe it evened out. 

"I don't want to lose you." Bonnie's breath was hot and damp in Caroline's neck; maybe she was crying. Under the cover of darkness, no one would call her on it.

"You won't."

They disentangled; Caroline stuck her hands in her pockets and watched Bonnie walk away, her small, determined silhouette melting into the darkness with Adaeze at her side. There was a future for Bonnie here, and thinking about it made Caroline happy—they wouldn't disappear, then, they would leave a legacy. There seemed to be a tacit agreement that non-one would ask Caroline if she wanted to leave with them; Caroline was grateful for it. Hélène threw her one last dirty look, pulling Soo Jin away with her uninjured hand and there they went too, dust blowing in the soft wind that accompanied them out of the witches' cemetery. There was the distant rumble of cars starting, the tiny dots —yellow and black— getting smaller and smaller on the winding road, and then nothing. Silence. 

Caroline breathed in. The air smelled of candle-smoke, dirt and, faintly, of blood. When she turned around the long shadows of the stones and makeshift graves sprawled on the ground. Malia was kneeling, collecting the candles and erasing traces of chalk. Her posture was defensive, like she was afraid Caroline was going to come up behind her and tear her throat out. She could've, but the urge was gone, replaced only with the soft habitual ache of hunger. 

"Need help with that?"

"Not from you," Malia sneered.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself."

She sat on one of the concrete graves. She didn't want to go back into the city, and this felt good, the slight early-morning chill that always preceded the sticky New York heat, silence reverberating for miles and miles. Even Malia kneeling at the middle of the pentagram, with her long braided hair and clunky silver earrings, was a strangely peaceful sight. 

As Caroline watched her, she noticed Malia was careful not to turn her back on her. It made moving difficult, a contrived shuffle around the graves. 

"I'm not going to attack you," Caroline said. "I'm over it."

"Yeah? And why am I supposed to trust you, exactly?"

"It doesn't look very comfortable, that's all." She shrugged. "You can't help me anyway."

Malia snorted, didn't answer, but Caroline noticed that after a while her shoulders relaxed a fraction and she stopped tip-toeing so much. When all the candles were a half-melted pile of wax and the chalk had been reduced to a faint pink trace on the ground she got another cigarette out and lit it with her hands cupped around her mouth, protecting it from the wind. She sighed out the first inhale. Her shoulders slumped. 

Caroline bit her lip. There was blood thumping in Malia's knuckles, in her heart, a faint background soundtrack to Caroline's thoughts. "Got one of those to spare?" she asked. 

Malia's eyes fluttered open, as though she'd forgotten Caroline was even there. She looked surprised that Caroline had asked; her first instinctive reaction was a snarl, but then she just looked hesitant. In the end she just held out the pack and looked away.

"Thanks," Caroline said. 

The lighter —silver; Caroline was noticing a theme— wordlessly got placed next to Caroline's thigh on the grave. She cradled the flame between her fingers. The first lungful of smoke felt like heaven.

"Thanks," she repeated, a little too eager. 

Malia snorted. "Don't overdo it," she said.

For a while they stood there in silence, the smoke curling in white tendrils over their heads and drifting up in the bruise-colored sky. The cemetery didn't feel like a normal place —it was as though there was still some mysterious spring of energy buried under the earth— but when you got used to it it became a background thrum, a gentle shiver that carried you out. 

"We don't like you," said Malia. "You hurt Remedios; the ancestors don't like that, and neither do we. They want you to go away."

"They'll get their wish, don't worry."

Malia shrugged. She was young, Caroline realized, but not young like Caroline herself was, smooth and eternal: Malia was fresh still, eighteen at most, and her defiance was adolescent, reflexive almost. Her big round earrings and her nose ring glinted sharp in the half-light.

When her cigarette was finished Malia crushed it on the ground with the heel of her boot. She loaded what remained of the candles in a big gym bag with a skull stenciled in with rhinestones on the front, collected the grimoire from atop one of the graves. 

"Cleanup duty," she said aimlessly, not for Caroline's benefit. She didn't seem to want to leave, to go back to the city.

She sat on a grave whose side had been tagged on, the jagged contours of a name, and rested her elbows on her knees. After a long while her eyes flitted to Caroline, then dropped back to the ground. 

"My dad died," she said brusquely.

"Mine too," Caroline said, but Malia ignored her.

"He was a deadbeat jerk, anyway. I don't miss him or anything. It's just—well, when he died, my mom, she was—she was pretty fucked up." She slid out of a flask from the lining of her leather jacket and unscrewed the top nervously. "You want some?"

"Yeah," Caroline said. She took a sip out of the flask; the silver was cold between her fingers, but the rim was warm. The alcohol —vodka, Caroline registered absently— bloomed hot in her stomach.

"I mean," Malia continued, playing absently with her rings, "she didn't get out of bed for a month. I was like, really? He left us eleven years ago. I was like, why do you even care? But she—she would've done anything. She tried. The others—they had to keep her from fucking everything up. But there's a balance. Adaeze helped her, set her head straight. You can't mess up with those kind of things."

Caroline didn't say anything. She wasn't sure she could've—wasn't sure she had anything to say that wasn't, they should have let her. They should have let _me_. 

Malia ducked her head. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You tried to kill Adaeze, for fuck's sake. You could kill me."

Caroline didn't deny it. 

"Life is so fucked-up," Malia said, with a desperate, self-deprecating laugh, and it was like a punch to the stomach—for a second Caroline was sure she was looking at herself at eighteen, the weight of the world on her shoulders and no-one to go with her through it. 

"You'll be fine," she couldn't help but say.

"Yeah? Like you?"

"You're not like me," Caroline said.

"Well thank God for that."

"Those people—" she nodded pointedly at the road ahead, made almost unreal-looking by the morning light, "they love you. You'll be fine. I'm not gonna tell you your dad is looking over you, because I have no clue. I'm not sure. But people—we survive worse than this. You'll be okay."

"A pep-talk from the resident vampire with anger issues," Malia snarked. "Yay me." But she seemed somewhat quieted, not as fidgety and angry as she had been a few minutes ago. Caroline would take what she could get.

She took another sip of vodka. "Cheers."

"Can you even get drunk? I thought all that stopped when you became a vampire. No more hangovers."

"Doesn't stop me from trying," Caroline said with a slight smile. "Otherwise what's the point of no hangovers, right?" 

Malia almost smiled back. It took another twenty minutes of silent drinking for her to start getting really tipsy, mellow and friendly with her eyes unfocused, staring into the undefined horizon.

"Sorry 'bout your husband," she slurred at some point. "Must suck. How long…?"

"Seven years." The flask was almost empty; the vodka burned but it was like it evaporated in her stomach, hitting her and never leaving any bruises.

"That's like 'alf a second for you, though," Malia said. She really could've been a wolf, Caroline thought. Tyler would've liked her.

"We grew up together," she said.

"Aww, high school sweethearts," Malia attempted to snark, but it ended up sounding a little choked-up. "Logan's not—whatever."

Caroline ribbed her softly with her elbow. "Tell me." Gossip always did raise her spirits.

Malia shook her head self-deprecatingly. One of her braids had fallen undone, the frizzy hair making a halo around her ear. "Nah, it's just—he doesn't know about us. Did—" she squinted up at Caroline.

"Yeah. I thought you knew. He was a werewolf, actually. A hybrid."

"I thought those were just a myth!" Something mischievous and vaguely awed lit up in her eyes. "Are you—wait, are you _Caroline Forbes_?"

Caroline stilled with her lips on the rim of the flask, surprised. "Is there any chance you'll believe me if I say no?"

"I can't believe I didn't put the pieces together! Remedios will _freak_." She frowned. "Well, maybe a little less now that you've, you know, tried to kill her—" Caroline didn't bother denying it, "She _loves_ you. That shit with the Originals was like Twilight, man."

"Is that supposed to be flattering?"

Malia punched her weakly on the shoulder. Then, narrowing her eyes: "Did you really sleep with Klaus Mikaelson?"

Caroline grimaced. "Does _everyone_ in the supernatural world know about that?"

"More like in the world," Malia snorted. "Actually I'm pretty sure one of the girls in La Maria's coven wrote a book about it and, like, got it published." She shrugged. "Apparently it's on the New York Times bestseller list or something."

Caroline laughed helplessly. Maybe she was a little drunk; this was surreal, and vampire consitution could only do so much. "Of course it is. My life, ladies and gentlemen."

"It's—" Malia gnawed on her lip, hesitant, "well, I'm sorry anyway. For your hybrid guy. Even though Remedios thought you had, like, run away with Klaus Mikaelson and that's why he hasn't made any trouble with the witches since he's been here. But maybe he's just planning something. Maybe he's, like, settled down."

"Sorry to disappoint," Caroline said, even as she couldn't help but think Klaus usually wasn't that into long-term planning. But people did change, if not on a deep, structural level—not Klaus, anyway. Thinking he might be different wouldn't lead anywhere good. "I'm the one who settled down."

"I guess you have to, at some point. Even you." Malia didn't mean it as an insult, Caroline noticed before she could get pissed: she just meant, even people like you—vampires, freaks. Witches were obviously another category in her mind. "Can't be Edward and Bella forever."

"That wasn't—" Caroline made a face, and Malia laughed. "Why do I even bother."

There was a silence, longer this time: Caroline was thinking about some twisted-up version of her life in a book, how strange it was that she had ended up the heroine in some strange, turnabout way instead of Elena; and Malia was thinking about whatever it was she was thinking about, sometimes laughing to herself at random intervals. 

"I told Logan I wanted to study architecture," she said eventually. Caroline raised an eyebrow. "I know, right? Do I even look like I want to draw buildings all day? I panicked when he asked me; I didn't know what to say."

"What do you do, anyway?" Malia gave her a look like, duh. "I mean, apart from that —and school. It's not like there's a supernatural crisis every twenty minutes." Even as she said it she couldn't help but remember their senior year, where it really had been that: someone dying of mysterious and bloody causes while they were still trying to uncover another mystery, everything crumbling around them while they ran frantically, trying to keep the world standing. 

"Oh," Malia said. "I thought you knew. Makes sense, I guess. My mom's—she's pretty powerful. Used to be, anyway. She's been grooming me for this gig since I was a kid. I'm supposed to become a liaison for urban witches or some shit like that. You know, running around trying to make sure everyone plays nice or whatever."

Caroline couldn't help it; she laughed, remembering Malia trying to jump on her, her fiery eyes and spitfire temper.

"Yeah, yeah," Malia grumbled. "Laugh all you want. Adaeze says I've got things to work out."

"Adaeze's always right, huh?"

"Pretty much," Malia said, either not picking up on the sarcasm or willfully ignoring it.

"Why didn't you tell your boyfriend about being a witch?"

"We're not supposed to. Besides, it's not like we've been going out that long, it's only been three months. I like him, though. He's sweet. He listens to Swedish jazz."

Caroline scrunched her nose. "He listens to what?"

Malia laughed. "I know, it sounds pretentious. But he makes it palatable." She sobered up, glanced over at Caroline; seemed to remember who she was talking to, even drunk as she was. She straightened. Caroline saw it in the set of her shoulders, the determination: you have to trust someone, right? "Anyway. I haven't told him. Sometimes it feels like I'm a completely different person when I'm with him."

The moon was waxing white and sickly over them. The wind had dispersed the smell of smoke—now it was only blood and vodka, the skittering rhythm of the quick pulse in the nooks of Malia's elbows. 

"I like it," she whispered.

Caroline nodded in the half-darkness. "Yeah," she said.

They drank until the flask was empty, then Malia replaced it in the lining of her jacket which she pulled tight across her shoulders. Her pretty earrings were a dull shine in the night. She hooked the bag of candles on her back, the grimoire under her arm, dusted off the back of her legs. 

"You staying here?" she asked eventually, looking unsure as to whether going was the best option.

"Don't worry about me," Caroline said.

"I'm not." She seemed to hesitate. "Just… why?"

Caroline looked away. "I just need some time to think. I want to be alone, that's all. I'll walk back."

"It's like three hours to Manhattan," Malia frowned. "By train."

Caroline didn't point out the fact that she could run at superhuman speed probably cut that time in half. "I'm not in a hurry," she said. "Go. I'll be fine."

"Yeah. Everything will be tip-top, right? That's your philosophy?"

Caroline laughed, open-throated. "You could say that." Elena would've.

Malia regarded her for what seemed a long time, her youthful face cut in sharp angles by the moonlight. Standing there in the dust with her ripped fishnets and the distorted, glowing skull at her back she looked like a vision for some distant future, and it didn't seem so unrealistic that she would be the one running through the town brokering peace accords. Caroline tried to read the expressions on her face: pity, concern, a faint trace of disgust. Tomorrow she would have forgotten all about that strange night. 

"Well," she said eventually, "whatever."

"Whatever," Caroline replied, gentler than she'd intended. They could've been friends, she thought, if she'd met Malia in the corridors of Mystic Falls High, if they'd squared off on the cheerleading squad. That life felt like centuries ago, now. 

Like the others before her —Bonnie and Adaeze, Remedios and Karen, Hélène and Soo Jin— Malia turned her back to Caroline and started down the path that lead out to the road. She stopped at the boundaries of the cemetery —if you could even call them that: it was just scraggly bits of barbed wire, broken slabs of concrete erected like tentative gates and covered with resistant brambles— and turned around. She was smiling. She took a few steps forward and held out her pack of cigarettes, a thumb creasing the front. 

"One for the road?" she asked. 

Caroline smiled back, tilting her head. "Yeah," she said. She picked one in the middle; their hands brushed as Caroline deftly slid the cigarette out and stuck it between her lips. "Light?"

Malia leant down and cupped a hand around Caroline's mouth, messing up her hair. It could easily have caught on fire, Caroline thought, but she didn't push it back. The little flame shot up: blue in the middle, then yellow, then orange, with red tendrils here and there at the periphery. Caroline leant forward until the tip of the cigarette touched the blue, then inhaled. When she breathed out the cloud of smoke looked like a comic-book bubble waiting to be filled in with dialogue, a thought. 

"Thanks," Caroline said belatedly. 

"Anytime," Malia said.

She straightened up, and this time when she left she didn't look back; within seconds Caroline was alone in the cemetery, the distant growl of the engine of Malia's car dwarfing to insignificance. It felt good to be alone again, like a needed pinprick. Caroline smoked the cigarette to ashes, then crushed the stub on one of the graves. 

"Thanks for nothing," she told the gray stone. It didn't answer. Caroline snorted delicately to herself, and it resounded in the deserted cemetery. "Typical."

She dozed there for what seemed like a long time but probably wasn't. It wasn't really uncomfortable because early dawn was always the best time in the summer, even though Caroline had never really bothered getting up that early before: that dew-covered fresh-smelling chill that announced the crushing heat, the sun barely peeking out from behind the moon. Caroline listened to nature wake. There were sounds she'd seldom taken the time to listen for before, now that she could hear them: buds breaking open, petals unfolding, trees breathing out. The busy, minuscule life of insects, with their undecipherable dialogues, the plastic clicks they made when they talked. In the distance the city humming, not yet a full song. One hour, Caroline told herself.

She was surprised when she woke up to find that she really had fallen asleep: the ground was rough and uncomfortable but she'd slept better than she ever had since Tyler'd death. The sun was out in full; the world was loud but not ungentle. Caroline dug her phone out of her pocket. As soon as she turned it on it started buzzing almost continuously, panicked texts and voicemails from Elena, Bonnie and Elena, then just Elena again. Caroline sighed. You had to face your problems at some point or another, right?

She hesitated for a moment, then dialed Elena's number.

"Oh my God," was Elena's response—her voice was breathy and high-pitched. "Are you okay? What happened? Well, Bonnie told me, but I didn't know— Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Caroline said. She winced, forgetting Elena couldn't see her. "Although I'm pretty sure I messed up Bonnie's relationship with this particular coven pretty badly."

"You're really okay?" Elena asked in a small voice.

"I swear to you. I'm fine."

Elena was being suspiciously quiet at the other end of the phone. 

"Elena?"

"Wait. You've been okay all night, and you didn't call either me or Bonnie? Fuck, Care. I thought—I thought something had happened to you. Why didn't you come back? You could've—"

"Well," Caroline couldn't help but snap, guilt nagging at her, "it's not like we parted on the best of terms, is it?"

"I don't care," Elena said fiercely the way only she could, like her particular set of moral laws was an evidence. "You call me. I don't care how much we fight."

"You're not my mother," Caroline said, but it sounded weak and ridiculous in her mouth.

"Fuck," Elena said softly. There was a rustle on her end of the phone, like she was sitting down on the bed. "You scared me so badly." There was a silence. "You know, when Bonnie told me about… what happened I didn't know what to think. It's not you. You're not that person."

Caroline sat down on the grave. Her head hurt; the sun had risen and slapped its gigantic coat of light on all of the earth, ridding it of shadows where Caroline could've hidden. She was still wearing the pretty purple top she had put on to see Klaus, and her wedding ring. 

"I am, though," she said, twisting it around her finger. "I'm not like you, El. Sometimes I just—"

"Listen to me." Elena sounded as agitated as she ever got. "You think I don't want to grab someone off the street and tear their throat out sometime? I just hide it better. We're the same, Caroline. You have to trust me. I didn't—" she hesitated, her voice sticking in her throat, "I didn't change that much."

"But you did. Change."

"Everyone does. Does that mean you can't trust me anymore?"

"Of course not," Caroline said, too fast, before she even knew what she was saying. It just seemed like such a ludicrous idea, not trusting Elena, when she'd been the first one Caroline had come to after Tyler's death to ask for help. When Elena had opened the door, and followed her.

"Then call me next time."

There was nothing to say to that. Caroline was breathing too hard, and the sun was hard on the back of her neck. She'd get sunburn, and she didn't even want to think about what she looked like after last night. Jesus. 

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Elena breathed.

"But that doesn't mean I take anything I said back. Or—" she swallowed, "what I did."

The silence on the other end went on so long Caroline had to check if Elena hadn't hung up. "Okay," she said eventually, her voice careful. "I still think he's manipulating you. And I don't understand how you could sleep with him."

The familiar outrage roared in Caroline's chest at that, but she tamped it down. She laughed, weak and fake. "Glad we're on the same page."

They stayed there for a few minutes, breathing in each other's ear. For all knowing that Elena still thought like that, that her words hadn't just been thrown around in anger, hurt —and it did—, it felt uncomparatively good to have her there, near, alive, still a friend after everything. Caroline squinted into the sun, wishing she had had the foresight to bring sunglasses with her. Then again—

"Are you coming back?" Elena asked carefully. 

Caroline stood up and stretched extensively, grimacing when her whole body expressed its discontent with such strenuous physical activity after everything that had happened. Vampire healing my ass, Caroline thought. 

"I am," she said. "Just… not right now." She sucked in breath. "Did you end up booking the tickets?"

"I did that this morning, printed them on the hotel printer. It's gonna take us a whole day to get there," there was a rustling of paper, "the flight to Cusco is twenty-three hours long. We have two stops, one in —Columbia and one in Peru. I haven't checked yet what the difference is, and the rest is pretty straighforward, the flight's out of JFK, Transamerican Airlines. Cost us a pretty penny but at least it's done. Does that all work?"

"Yeah. I'm glad we're leaving," Caroline said after a while. She knew Elena would understand what she meant: maybe I won't miss Tyler as much if I'm in another hemisphere. It was a hollow wish, but they were the only thing you could hang onto when you lost someone you loved, Caroline was learning. 

"Hm," Elena said. "We'll find whoever did this. We'll make it right."

"We'll find them," Caroline agreed, because she couldn't concur for the second part; nothing could make this right. But she suspected Elena knew that too.

"We have to be honest with each other," Elena said then, painfully earnest. "Otherwise we'll never—I want us to be friends forever." Caroline made a small sound of surprise. "I know we never said it, it just made sense for so long and now… I don't want to lose you, Caroline. Not again. Shit." She might have been crying, Caroline realized. "Tyler… I loved him too. Not like you, but I did, and I can't believe he's gone. I guess I thought… I never really wanted to think about living forever, but that's what's going to happen, isn't it? And it just seemed so unfair, that Tyler wouldn't get that, after everything that happened to him, I—"

"And then what?" Caroline interrupted her, her voice hoarse and croaky.

"What?"

"You said 'it seemed unfair'. And then what? It doesn't seem unfair now?"

Elena not knowing what to say; now that was a first.

"It is," she said finally, in a whisper. "It is unfair. But what we got is unfair, too."

"What _did_ we get? More trouble, people suddenly wanting to kill us left and right? Klaus fucking Mikaelson showing up and messing up our lives?"

"You know what we got."

It was like roleplay, Caroline thought absently: Elena arguing that it was a gift and Caroline that it was a curse.

"Other people… their lives are easier. And the hunger doesn't get better, but we survive through everything. That's what we get, Care. You and I—we're still here."

"So what, Tyler just wasn't strong enough? He wasn't up for the job, is that it?"

Elena sighed. "I don't know. I don't have all the answers, Care. I just—" her voice was like a hand reaching through the screen of Caroline's cell, "I don't want you to do something you'll regret."

"Too late," Caroline said. There were so many things she regretted. She realized belatedly that Elena would probably take it as an admission of guilt, but she didn't correct her.

"You should come home," Elena said. She shaped 'home' like a softness, something cosy and comfortable and timeless light-years beyond their makeshift king-size in the too-small hotel room. "When you're ready. We can talk."

Caroline laughed. When she went to wipe a fleck of dirt from her cheek, she realized she was crying. "Talk? About what?"

"I don't know. Girl talk. It's been a while since we've had a sleepover."

We've been having sleepovers every night since my husband died, Caroline thought about saying, but she knew what Elena meant. Those hadn't been sleepovers; they had been long, restless nights filled with nightmares, and Elena sleeping besides her.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, okay. I'll come back tonight." She cleared her throat, tilting her face up into the sun. It must be noon now, or something like it —already. The salt from her tears would dry in messy, invisible tracks, but she didn't mind. "What are you going to do today?"

"You know, I never went to the Empire State Building," Elena said wonderingly, and Caroline laughed. Elena joined in after a while and it felt good, like high schools summers and rides in Bonnie's convertible feeling on top of the world. "Other than that I thought I might try a library."

"Feeling studious?"

"I still have your pictures. Of the knife. I thought I might see if I can dig up a Quechua dictionary and start with that."

"Oh." There were other things to say, maybe point out that most of those signs actually looked like they were drawings and not words, but Caroline just said, "Well… good luck, I guess."

Elena didn't ask what Caroline was planning on doing, which was a good thing, because Caroline had no idea. The city was shining in the horizon and it looked like an ancient monster that would swallow her if she so much as dared to come close. In comparison, the cemetery seemed safe. But now—now was the time to take all the risks she never had before, right? It wasn't like she cared about the consequences anymore. Regardless, she was grateful.

"Be careful," said Elena softly. "Whatever you do."

"You know me," Caroline said, trying for light and jokey and ending up square on questioning. "Prudence is my middle name."

Then— "No more secrets from now on," Elena said, completely serious and somehow managing to make it sound neutral, not like she was accusing Caroline at all, even though she probably was. "We can't lie to each other anymore."

"We're not—" _married_ , but the word stuck in Caroline's throat. "Okay," she croaked out. "Don't lie to me either," she said before she could think twice about it. She hoped Elena would understand what she meant: don't pretend to be more than you are.

Elena didn't answer. "I'll see you, then? Text me before you come back. I love you." She didn't wait for an answer —uncharacteristic, for Elena— and hung up.

Caroline stared dumbly at her phone for a few seconds, then laughed. She stuck the cellphone in her jeans pocket and started walking in direction of the city.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **warnings:** i feel like i should warn for some serious above-the-waist lesbian action here. main pairings in this chapter are katherine/caroline, katherine/elijah and elijah/hayley, but it all works into the plot.
> 
> oh, and uh, sorry for all the wait!

If pressed, Caroline would have had a hard time saying what she did that day. With the previous night and the stubbornly unfading memory of rage stirring in her oesophagus, of rising up to grab at Adaeze's throat and thinking about killing them all, so easily—with the conversation with Malia and her surprising but hilarious celebrity that feeling that everything would collapse if Caroline didn't start  _running_ had abated. She was left with a sort of empty-headed feeling, not peace but something like a precarious calm which she didn't entirely dislike, however unfamiliar it felt. She had used to be so jittery. It had calmed a little with Tyler, but there had been days when she could barely keep still, when the mountains all around made her want to tear something apart, when she'd picked fights with Tyler just so she had something to  _do_ .

The afternoon was well underway by the time she found herself back in Manhattan. This time the city didn't feel crowded and aimless as much as it felt flowing, as though pushing Caroline to wander through streets whose square mathematical names quieted her, the soles of her feet hard with all the walking she had done, almost all of it at normal human speed. She popped into a coffee-shop and ordered a coffee with caramel just to be able to use the bathroom. The girl —woman— in the mirror looked back at her with an amused, indifferent expression, her hair matted with blood and dust. She didn't look anything like the girl Caroline remembered, or Tyler's wife for that matter. In the end, though, Caroline didn't care; it was just one more person to mourn.

When she came out of the bathroom she figured why not and sat down to drink her coffee. It was good, overly sweet; she watched people walking past through the almost-clean French doors, trying to read the backwards menu on the glass. She paid, smiling absently at the hipster pretty-boy type at the cash register. As usual, no one seemed to have gotten the memo that Tyler was dead, but Caroline didn't feel up to being mad at them for it. Outside the weather hadn't caught on either, and it was sunny but not sweltering for once, the sky an intimidating unbroken blue overhead. Caroline behaved like a lazy native rather than a tourist; she ended up getting a mani-pedi in a high-ceilinged shop where everything was pastel, including the staff. The girl who did her nails thinned her lips at her dirty hair and Caroline compelled her back to the bathroom just to be vindictive, pierced a mean little bite at the crease of her neck and shoulder and asked her the address for the best hairdresser within walking distance before telling her to buy a scarf that would compliment her outfit more than her shoes did.

She got distracted on her way to the hairdresser's by a shimmering of lights like a mirage, deceivingly similar to the snail-like trace she imagined a ghost might leave in its wake. By the time she'd abandoned the trail, kind of ashamed, her bottom lip had a clear mark etched into it in the exact shape of her teeth. She asked the effeminate hairdresser regarding her with shock-horror to go for honey strands while he tried to summon the courage not to ask what the hell had happened to her. She soon got annoyed with it and told him she'd taken a run that had ended in a wild romp in the bushes. He laughed, showing off LA-perfect white teeth, said, "I've been there," and Caroline decided she liked him —even more for not mentioning the blood. That probably wasn't the weirdest thing he had seen. This was New York, after all.

He kept up an unbroken stream of chatter while he rendered her hair to its former glory; by the end of it Caroline had learned the schedule of his dog's chronic diarrhea as well as all three of his mother's middle names. Caroline only told him she'd lived in New York for three years. Lying about who she was didn't disguise or even ease the grief but it did serve to make it more remote, the sick-white swelled flesh of a closing wound ready to re-open and gush out at any moment. Maybe she could live with that, Caroline decided. Then she closed her eyes to enjoy the hot swish of air on her skull and the image of Tyler's lacerated torso slapped against the back of her eyelids like it had every time she'd closed her eyes since that day—stinging tears came welling up—her throat closed up—maybe she could _try_ to live with that, she amended.

She lied to all the people who asked her name. It felt good to pretend that there was no rush, that she was just adrift in the city, content with happening onto its secrets and dent-sized idiosyncrasies. She visited landmarks and small shops, wandering between the shelves with floating at the back of her mind the distant idea that this might be the last chance she got. Once she got out of that plane she would be all business; it didn't matter what happened to her as long as she got Tyler's due. She thought about the fan of Tyler's notes on pack dynamics she'd never even pretended to care about replaced by the others on the big oak table the night before his death; then she thought about the knife. All business—right.

When it got dark again, the whole day had been wasted and Caroline was presentable again, her reflection grinning back sharp and Barbie-pink when she caught it in store windows —when she was satisfied she looked like herself again, if a slightly anemic and baggy-eyed version of herself, instead of something feral and desperate—, she started towards Bonnie's apartment. She didn't know why she was going at first other than the pathetic instinct to grab onto her friend and never let her go; then she decided, and from then on it was set. Caroline was surprised at her own resolve. There was something tight and coiled inside her, like a pulled muscle; and she wanted to let go.

The power of memory made Elena's voice resonate in her ear again, ever the good angel: _no more lies_. But Caroline wouldn't lie, she didn't need to. She just wouldn't tell. There were things Elena didn't need to know. And Tyler was gone, after all. If he cared he would've stayed. Caroline cleared her throat to keep from sobbing in the middle of the street. Was it unjust? Maybe.

"Yeah?" Bonnie's voice emerged from the buzzer, tinny. Caroline tried to pick out her heartbeat, to see how she was taking the whole thing, but there were too many people in the building. If Caroline focused it was like music, a constant and atonal drumming, almost soothing.

"It's me," Caroline said after a while.

There was a silence, long enough that Caroline started to worry that Bonnie really was mad at her. Eventually she said, fake-casual, "Hey, Care. Come on up."

There was a metallic sound, and Caroline pushed the door open. The staircase still smelled faintly like witches, sharp wafts of perfume and cold silver. Caroline wondered idly if Malia had made it home alright, if she'd gone directly to see her boyfriend. If they'd last long enough for her to tell him what she was. Probably not. They were so young.

She wasn't winded when she got to Bonnie's door, but she felt breathless. She raised her hand to knock. The door drifted softly open.

"You shouldn't leave it open," Caroline said as she walked in. "It's not super safe, you know."

Bonnie was standing in the middle of the living-room, pouring tea —jasmine, it smelled like— in little ornate cups. Caroline noticed she hadn't given her a choice of beverages this time. Then again, Caroline could see how Bonnie might doubt her decision-making abilities right about now.

Bonnie shrugged. "You'll protect me," she said absently. Then she seemed to register what she'd said and she looked up, grinning sharply, "Or I'll protect myself. I'm pretty sure a robber would have more than he'd bargained for if he tried anything here."

Caroline tilted her head, conceding. "I guess you're right." She sat down at Bonnie's urging, toeing off her shoes and folding her legs on the couch. "Still." She rested her hands on her knees, fingers fanned. Her nails glimmered softly in the fading light, a light coral.

"Nice," Bonnie said, nodding at them, though she seemed curious.

Caroline grinned, holding her hand up to get a better look. The sunlight glinted sharply off the corner of her thumbnail. "I know, right?" She caught Bonnie's inquisitive look. "I needed some R&R."

"Hm," Bonnie said, and Caroline couldn't determine if it was meant to be judgemental or not. "Elena was here earlier."

Caroline ducked her head. She took a sip of tea to distract herself from answering: it was scalding, burned her tongue. She swore. Bonnie reached forward instinctively, then drew back and smiled, fond. "Nice diversion. You want some cold water?"

Caroline managed a quirk of her mouth. "Please." Bonnie disappeared in the kitchen and came back with a tall glass of water in which floated three ice-cubes.

They drank their tea in silence, Caroline blowing on it for a few minutes before she dared take another sip while Bonnie just drank hers, unafraid of searing. Caroline's tastebuds were numb, but the hot liquid sliding down her throat felt good nonetheless, as did the pregnant, soft smell of jasmine slowly suffusing the air around them. Caroline kept her head down, searching for something to say.

Eventually she went for, "I'm sorry for what happened yesterday." Bonnie nodded. "And not coming back right away. I was…" She flicked non-existent dust off her jacket. It smelled nice, like new leather. "I need a favor."

"Malia stayed," Bonnie said, which was about the last thing Caroline expected her to. She stared a little, dumbly.

"What?"

"Malia," Bonnie said, and gestured to her ears, "the one with the… earrings. Kinda aggressive. Black hair, braid. She stayed behind when we left."

"Oh," Caroline said. "Yeah."

"She didn't seem very happy about the whole thing," Bonnie insisted. "That I asked for their help with the ritual. Did she…"

Caroline realized that Bonnie was asking if Malia had tried to hurt her and wanted to laugh. It would've been unkind, though. It could easily have gone that way.

"No. Nothing happened. She just gave me a cigarette, and then she left." Without really knowing why, she added, "She'll make a good, uh, urban liaison. If that's really a thing. Adaeze was right to choose her."

"I don't know," Bonnie said, looking as though she was trying to figure something out. "She gets angry fast; it's not really an advantage for a witch. Not that I have any say in the decision anyway."

Caroline looked around the room. It felt like someone had been in there since the witches, an obtrusive and intimate presence; the ruffled quilt on the couch, a mess of unwashed glasses on the low table, and for once Bonnie looked more exhausted than Caroline, the bags under her eyes a faint bruised purple. Elena had been there, of course, but maybe someone else… Jeremy?

"—favor?"

"Huh?"

Bonnie leant forward and slapped Caroline's hand lightly, playfully, as though to say, pay attention. "I said, what was that favor? You could pretend to be here in spirit at least."

Caroline gave an apologetic smile. "Sorry. Yeah. Remember when Elena talked about tracking Hayley last time?"

"I didn't do it, if that's what you're concerned about," Bonnie said, frowning. "To be honest, with all that happened… I didn't even remember she'd asked."

"I know, it's like we got used to having a normal life, who knew. But I was thinking… you could still do it, maybe? For me? You still have the charm, right?"

Bonnie nodded absently. "Why would you want to track Hayley?"

"She has something I want," Caroline lied, because she wasn't going to say: she left without saying goodbye. She didn't even like Hayley. She added, as an afterthought, "Don't tell Elena."

"Why not?"

"She's got something against Hayley, apparently," Caroline said. "I don't really get it to be honest. If anyone should hate her it's me." Although the reason for that was tenuous, distilled by years of ignoring each other —there was only that time with Tyler even though that had been when he and Caroline were broken up; or her history with Klaus, but Caroline wasn't supposed to care about that.

"You don't?"

"She's alright," said Caroline —for the first time, she realized, but it was the truth. "She's been through a lot of shit, like all of us. Besides, you have to pity someone who went and fell in love with _Elijah_ of all people."

Bonnie gave her an oblique look that suggested she wasn't fooled. Caroline kept her face carefully blank. But she didn't feel guilty. Resentment she was good at, but hatred eluded her —Bonnie knew that.

"Let me get the charm," Bonnie stood up and turned her back on Caroline to rummage in a drawer. She was beautiful, Caroline reflected again, like something you just couldn't break no matter how hard you tried. "It's a bad idea, you know that." The charm was dripping silver from Bonnie's hand. "You're just asking for trouble. You should just leave alone; if you keep looking for them you might just find them."

"It's only Hayley," Caroline said, pretending not to understand. Hayley was enough. She'd thank her for the note, get closure, tell her to run as far away as she could before she got herself in even more trouble. She owed her that.

Bonnie shrugged; this time it was purposefully judgmental. Before she could say something else about how bad of an idea it was —it wasn't like Caroline didn't know—, Caroline asked, "Was Jeremy here?"

Bonnie's eyes widened with surprise. She tried to play it casual, "He visits sometimes, I told you that. I know Elena's not—"

"No, I mean today. You told me Elena came, right? Was he here?"

Bonnie's face shuttered down. "I didn't know she was going to come," she said. "Jeremy was just—passing through, he does that sometimes, he doesn't have a phone, so… You know, what you did was fucked-up, I just needed to talk to someone."

And he's the one you talk to, Caroline completed in her head. She tried to picture the scene in her head: Elena rapping softly on the door and opening it only to find Jeremy on the couch with his feet squarely set on the ground, his arm around Bonnie's shoulders, whispering… She hadn't cared that they were dating, back then. She'd liked it, even; it meant both of them couldn't escape her, that they couldn't slip out of her grasp at all. Though of course she didn't see it like that. She'd said she was happy the people she loved loved each other, and Bonnie had smiled, "Something like that," like she wasn't fooled. She probably wasn't.

"What did she say?"

Bonnie sighed. "Nothing. They hugged, and then he left. I wish they would just set it to rest, Care. They could just have—" she shook her head, obviously frustrated. "Elena always prides herself on being so well-adjusted." Caroline had to smile a little at that. "I wish they would work out their issues already. They obviously love each other."

"Maybe that's the problem," Caroline said before she could think about it twice. With Bonnie's inquisitive eyes on her she expounded, "Loving people isn't always enough, right? You know that as well as I do. Sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth."

The haircut and the new clothes hadn't done their job well enough: now she was discovering that beneath their protective disguise she was just as tired and brittle as she had been before, her head full of undreamed nightmares. She sighed; the only other option was to smash things on the ground, and there was no time for that.

"They're all they have," Bonnie said. She was fiddling with that bracelet again, and when Caroline discreetly looked she felt stupid for not having realized earlier that it was Jeremy's and that the little animal figure was a wolf. Its silver jaws were closed, though.

"Yeah," she said. "Not very healthy, is it? Maybe it's better that they just try without each other for a while." There was no polite way to say that Jeremy might not want to kill Elena as much if she wasn't the only person he loved in the world, but Caroline knew Bonnie would understand.

Bonnie gave her a look. She seemed on the point of retorting something Caroline wouldn't have liked to hear, but she didn't. Caroline was grateful. She rubbed her hands together. Her ring made a dull metal noise when it rasped against her new manicure. A long shiver shook her. She breathed in.

"So, will you do it?"

"The tracking spell? Yeah. Don't—" Bonnie darted a glance at Caroline, then thought better of it and let her gaze settle on her, deep and brown and steady. "Don't do anything stupid though, okay? Promise me."

Caroline's mouth quirked in a smile. She felt a little hollow inside. Maybe Elena had been right after all; you could forgive someone and still not trust them. "Pinkie promise," she said, holding up her little finger.

Bonnie returned her smile, then linked their fingers. They separated with a quiet slap of skin and Bonnie said, soft, "Make a wish."

Caroline had nothing left to wish for that didn't involve gruesome death, so she made one for Bonnie instead. "Thanks," she said then, and wished she had a cigarette to settle the skittering feelings in her chest. She'd never been uncomfortable with emotional honesty before, but now it seemed like just saying Thank you or I love you or I promise took years out of her. Not that she cared; she had hundreds of decades to spare, provided she didn't get her heart torn out by a stray sicko.

Bonnie laid out all her ingredients on the table. After the demonstration from Adaeze's coven it seemed a little amateurish, even though Caroline felt guilty for thinking it. It worked, that was what mattered, wasn't it? The sand started tracing curlicues on the map, slow as molasses. It was a long time before it settled on a nook in the Upper East Side, and Bonnie was sweating —nothing obvious, but it was soaking her shirt at the nape of her neck and beading over her top lip. Caroline pretended not to see, turned her head away when Bonnie went to wipe it with the back of her hand. She rocked back on her heels. When Caroline took her hand she squeezed it with something that looked like rage.

Then her face smoothed over, she was Bonnie again, composed and sensible and bitchy and wise, and she said, "I think I know where she is." She pointed at the map. "There's a club there I used to go to when I was new in town. Pretty high-end, but that's the Upper East Side for you. They make those drinks with smoke and like, day-glo chemical stuff, you know?"

"At least one of us is having fun," Caroline said, laughing.

"I honestly can't picture Elijah bobbing his head to Kanye West," Bonnie shrugged, "but who knows anymore. It has been a while." Her eyes cut over to Caroline. "Are you going to go?"

Caroline was already zipping up her jacket; one glance outside had informed her that the night had descended while she wasn't looking, and it was probably cold outside. "Yeah," she said. "Thanks. I owe you."

Bonnie scoffed. "Shut up," she said peremptorily. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," and when Caroline gave her an amused look she amended, "okay, don't get drunk on jaegerbombs or fuck some random in the bathroom, at least."

"I don't know," Caroline smirked, as though it wouldn't take a lot more than jaegerbombs to make her fuck anybody in the bathroom and not throw up at the reminder of Tyler crawling over her in their bed, in their house, as though she wasn't a fucking widow and this wasn't her swan song, more or less, "gotta make the most of my first trip to New York, right?"

Bonnie frowned. "It's not your first time here."

Caroline shrugged. "First time I actually bother to sight-see," she said, and caught Bonnie's gaze, the absurdity of it making them both burst into giggles. She stepped forward and hugged Bonnie hard, catching bones. "Thanks for everything," she said in the crook of her neck. "For helping us. Couldn't have made it without you." We can never make it without you, she thought.

"You'll be fine," Bonnie said, and Caroline didn't say that she had no way of knowing that because they were both aware of it. "Tyler…" she breathed against Caroline's cheek, and Caroline stiffened without meaning to, "he'd be proud of you."

Caroline pulled away, letting her hands linger on Bonnie's forearms. Then they were holding hands.

"Yeah," she said, numb.

"He would," Bonnie insisted, and where Elena would have looked earnest and overflowing she was just certain, something that took root in her heart and expanded far down beneath her feet, anchoring her to the ground.

"Okay," Caroline said, letting that certainty sway her. She rocked forward a little, as though she was going to kiss Bonnie on the forehead. "Take care. I'll see you."

"You will," Bonnie said, and it sounded cheesy, like a line from a revenge movie, the villain leaning over the table with his metal-grey briefcase and sunglasses, but Caroline didn't laugh.

She took a step back. The door was still open from earlier. "Okay," Caroline said, and then, when she'd found her balance, she repeated, "okay," and she left. Bonnie's heartbeat did a quick frantic tap-tap thing in the background, but by the time Caroline had made it down the stairs it had settled down into its usual steady rhythm.

It wasn't a long walk to the nightclub —The Lighthouse, Bonnie had told her its name was— but Caroline decided to take the tube anyway. She soon realized how dumb an idea that was: all the girls in glittery make-up and boys in tight jeans and foolish grins weren't half as attractive as the excited thrum of their blood was, and in the dense evening crowd it was overwhelming. She felt herself salivating with preemptive pleasure; if she closed her eyes she could imagine the taste of it washing over her. She felt dirty with lust and after a moment of hesitation she took off her wedding ring and pushed it down her jeans pocket where it would be safe. By the time she made it out into the clear night she was ravenous, not completely sure if she still wanted to talk to Hayley anymore or just pull a stranger into a dark alley and bleed him dry. She thought, fuck Hayley. This was her last night in New York after all, she'd been right when she'd told Bonnie she had to make the best of it. Soon enough everything would be blood and grime and revenge and the memory of Tyler everywhere, in the eyes of every person she talked to. Tonight she'd let herself off the hook, she decided, just walk into the first club she saw and dance until her hands fell off. Drink too much. Come back to Elena in the dead of night and carefully not lie to her, and tomorrow they would finally be gone.

The first club she found happened to be The Lighthouse anyway but the wide, dark building was strangely alluring and Caroline resolved to go inside nevertheless. Maybe Hayley was already gone. It was a big place; even if she wasn't, they'd never bump into each other. In fact, Caroline didn't know what she'd been thinking— talk about a needle in a haystack. She laughed to herself, almost drunk by proxy, almost safe in the crush of happily and exuberantly trashed people. The bouncer let her in without a second look, parting the pretend-gold cord with a bored nod.

The music was pounding. Caroline felt like she had been swallowed in a giant heartbeat; around her people were dancing, absorbed in the music, their faces shiny with sweat and glitter, only sporadically lit by the stroboscopic lights. Her eyes started roaming around the room on instinct until she remembered that she wasn't here searching for anyone and made her way to the bar, generously using her elbows. There was a band on the other side of the large, high-ceilinged room, and they played like they were dancing too. Typical, Caroline thought, a little dazed.

"Mojito," she told the bartender. He smiled at her in the darkness, but Caroline didn't return it. The feeling of uneasiness from earlier that day had come back, tense and uncomfortable in her stomach. She took a generous sip.

After a few drinks she felt marginally more relaxed, even though it took a lot more to really get her in the mood, vampire constitution be damned. And there was the fact, always at the back of her head, that although she and Elena had had that much-needed conversation it didn't mean everything was fine, far from it. There were still grievances on both sides, and what if— A guy with mascara stains around his eyes and long, slightly greasy hair sidled to her, smiling. In other circumstances Caroline would've rolled her eyes and told him to scamper off, but she felt a little buzzed, and besides, her husband was dead.

"Yes," she said, even though she wasn't sure he had asked her to dance. She took his sweaty hand and led him to the dancefloor, where he plastered himself against her. She pushed him back a few inches, smiling sharply. People never understood this particular smile until it was too late: Careful; don't come too close; I could eat you alive without even trying. She remembered a story Elena had told her, about Damon getting her to do just this, dance and drink from some unsuspecting girl in the crowd, swaying, let blood drip on your chin and hear that heartbeat stutter in time with the beat; the spark of something illicit and dangerous, the rush, getting away with it. At the time she had hated her for that story; thought, I could have been that girl. She shook her head to chase Elena's image. Not tonight.

She danced for what seemed like years. At one point she lost her partner in the crowd, but she didn't really mind; she gathered her arms over her head and let her body take the wheel, twisting and bending with the music. Fuck Elena. She didn't have any right to judge. If she believed in true love so much, why wasn't she the one who'd gotten hitched at twenty? Exactly. She had no right to talk, none at all. Caroline would like to see her, if Klaus smiled down at her like she was a particularly tasty lamb, if he kissed her like she was holding the sun between her teeth… And anyways it was irritating that she still pretended to be that perfect girl even though Caroline _knew_ , had seen with her own eyes proof that that wasn't true. It wasn't like she had some kind of moral high ground, was it?

Sweat pervaded through her clothes, and even though she wasn't drunk she felt giddy, exalted to the bone. She would have to take a taxi to get back, she thought idly, and considered staying there until dawn not to have to crawl silently into her hotel room bed, trying not to wake up Elena. She wouldn't sleep anyway — she was too wired.

For the first few times she didn't hear her name being yelled somewhere near. It seemed doubtful that anyone would know her: hadn't she come here especially to get trashed without having to suffer through any more supernatural pow-wows? And it wasn't like she had many non-supernatural friends, at this point. But— wait, no. That wasn't why she'd come here in the first place. She'd come here to find Hayley, to—

"Caroline!" the voice insisted.

Caroline turned around, eyes fluttering open, and found herself face to face with…

"Katherine," she said, instantly sobered up, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice. Great. She was really hitting the jackpot today, wasn't she?

"Long time no see," Katherine smirked. Caroline took her in, still incredulous: she was wearing a leather jacket and glitter all over her cheekbones, her hair messy like a rockstar. After spending so much time with Elena it was startling, too, seeing Elena's snarkier, eviller twin materialize out of the freaking woodwork.

"Career change?" Caroline couldn't help but ask.

Katherine laughed, unbothered by the sarcasm. "Still as charming as ever. So, lovers' reunion?"

Caroline rolled her eyes. "No. How do you know about that?"

Katherine shrugged. "Word travels fast." She smiled, predatory. "And what can I say, I've got a face people trust."

Caroline almost laughed at that. What she really wanted was to go back to dancing, but she'd learned her lesson along with the rest of the Mystic Falls population: turning your back on Katherine Pierce was never a good idea.

"I thought you'd be dead by now," she said after a while, too honest but also too out of it to pretend, to play the usual games. Seeing Katherine here was only another reminder that Tyler—

Katherine's eyes went sharp for a second, extraordinarily focused, and she grinned. "Why would you think that?"

Caroline shrugged. Why had she? No-one ever died anymore, except the people who really mattered. It was a good thing she'd given up believing in God, otherwise understanding why he had chosen to take Tyler instead of Katherine would have wrenched all the rage left inside her.

"Humanity gets old fast," Katherine said, unprompted, her eyes flitting from dancer to dancer until they settled back on Caroline. "What are you doing here?"

"I feel like I should be the one to ask you that." Caroline waved a slightly incredulous hand towards Katherine's kohl-rimmed eyes, her battered leather jacket and sour cherry mouth, "And why are you dressed like an Arctic Monkeys groupie?"

"Gotta blend into the surroundings, you know," Katherine said with a mischievous smile. "But I know what I'm doing here. I thought _you_ were holed up in marital bliss with your little boy scout in the most boring state after Utah? Trouble in paradise?"

Caroline ignored the question. Her eyes roamed around the room again, trying to pick out things she hadn't been searching for when she'd arrived, unsheathed fangs, the well-pressed bloom of a pocket square. In the past the cat had never gone far without the mouse trailing —although the analogy didn't work that well, and Caroline lost a few seconds trying to figure out who was what or if both were a combination, rodent and feline blended together.

Katherine rolled her eyes, stealing a drink —acid pink with a jaunty little umbrella, Caroline noticed absently, and smoke rising off it in long curlicues— off someone and draining it in one gulp, her fangs catching on the rim of the glass. Caroline couldn't help but watch. "You're not going to find him if he doesn't want to be found," she said drily.

"What—"

"Oh, please. You're about as subtle as a car crash." Failing to find somewhere to set it down, she threw the glass lazily behind her. Caroline lent her trained ear, but couldn't distinguish the responding shatter. "Besides, as I said, words travel fast. I know all about your little roadtrip with Miss Mystic Falls and Elijah's werewolf girlfriend."

" _I_ 'm Miss Mystic Falls," Caroline corrected before she could help herself, and felt heat rise to her cheeks.

Katherine laughed, not exactly unkind. "Of course you are. Wanna get out of here?"

It sounded so much like a pick-up line —and it had been so long since someone had tried to flirt with Caroline, much less pick her up— that for a second she didn't know what to answer. Katherine picked up on her hesitation and smirked. "To talk," she clarified. "Unless you have something else in mind."

Caroline decided that the booze was getting to her head and ignored the last part of her sentence; this whole thing was confusing enough _without_ Katherine trying to get into her pants. She went to touch her ring, but remembered belatedly that she hadn't picked it up before leaving the hotel. Now that she'd noticed, she felt naked without it.

"Yeah," she said, a little dazedly.

Katherine led her down a dark corridor whose ceiling was low enough that Caroline almost had to duck not to hit her head on it. The crowd got sparser, the music more and more remote, until the only thing Caroline could hear was the low, taunting patter of Katherine's heartbeat, the only thing she could see the glinting bloodthirsty red of her nail polish, hands trailing in her wake as though to grab Caroline if she tried to run away. At the end of the corridor they emerged through a fire escape, probably closed to the public: it was dangling above the city, too high, the streets twinkling with lights in the abyss beneath them. Caroline wasn't afraid of heights, not really, but she swallowed. Katherine followed the movement of her throat.

"Well," Caroline said, "what do you even want?"

"Just a nice conversation between old friends," Katherine smirked again, in that tone she used when she wanted to mellow you down before she stuck a knife in your back. She touched Caroline's wrist. The fire escape was too narrow to pull out of her reach; Caroline only squirmed away, trying to breathe.

"I know who you're searching for," Katherine said when she got bored of watching Caroline pretend not to feel like she was being trapped. She reached forward and her nails grazed Caroline's wrist, slid up her forearm. It didn't feel as bad as it should've. "Let me give you a piece of free advice: leave while there's still time."

"I've seen Klaus already," Caroline blurted out, her head too full to lie. She twisted until Katherine was no longer touching her; breathed in. "And I'll leave when I want to. My turn to give out tips," she added, regaining confidence and taking a step towards Katherine, her shadow splashing against the wall, boxing Katherine in, "maybe you should be a little more careful with me. I've grown up since you saw me last."

"Sure you did," Katherine said, sweetly condescending. "And I was talking about the werewolf princess, by the way." Her face contorted in disdain. "I don't care about your little affair with Klaus, idiotic as it may be."

Caroline's brows furrowed. "Why do you care about Hayley?" It was strange, saying her name —like they were friends. They weren't.

"I don't. But you've fulfilled your part of the bargain, Caroline. She's here, and so are you. No need to go searching for more trouble than you're already in, huh?"

For once she was the one who knew more, Caroline realized. Whatever she wanted, Katherine had no leverage on her: she didn't know why Caroline was here, or about Tyler, and why she wanted to see Klaus, or even— She laughed; she couldn't help it. Katherine didn't seem to like it: her fangs slid out with a slight hiss and Caroline barely had the time to blink before she was suspended over the sprawling darkness, her back bent on the metal railing, Katherine's hand tight around her throat.

"You might have grown up," she said amiably, "but I'm still the teacher here, hon. Best not to laugh in my face until you can actually manage to walk two steps without stumbling, how about it?"

Caroline tried to push her off, but her grip was solid. In the end she had to suffer it until Katherine saw fit to release her. She fell to her knees, coughing, holding her throat, glared up at Katherine, who was inspecting her nails. She sighed happily.

"I'd forgotten how good that feels," she said, watching with an amused smile as Caroline struggled up, leaning on the railing for support. "Well, where were we?"

"You've decided to ruin my night for no discernible reason, and apparently now you care about Hayley?" Caroline snarked, trying for poise and missing by a mile.

"Oh, yes. The coincidence seems a little far-fetched," Katherine said, reaching for Caroline again, unbothered when Caroline glared and swatted her hand away, "that you would happen into the same club as me, don't you think? Your dog is probably waiting for you back in fairytale land; why don't you go back to him and let the grown-ups play in peace?"

Caroline bristled at the term. Not that being centuries old made you a grown-up; she'd have trouble finding a more convincing twelve-year-old than Klaus, at least where impulse control was concerned.

"I don't care how far-fetched it is," she said coolly. "I'm here to relax. So how about you take your own advice and we just go our separate ways? I think we've established that sleepovers aren't in our future."

"I don't know about that," Katherine drawled, with a sudden smile that showed all of her teeth —she was still the predator. Caroline didn't like that smile at all. "Do you know what the problem with you is, Caroline?"

Caroline didn't answer, but that didn't deter Katherine in the least.

"Your problem," she said in a whisper, and when she advanced this time there was nowhere for Caroline to walk backwards, so she had to suffer it, the length of Katherine's slim, tensile body against hers, "is that you're so well-suited for darkness. You understand it. I guess it's a case of in the wrong place at the wrong time." She leaned in until her mouth almost touched the lobe of Caroline's ear. The chemical smell of lipstick and perfume was overpowering. "If only you didn't love Elena so much, following her everywhere like a lovesick puppy. If only you weren't so _afraid_. You're not the type to be satisfied to be second fiddle, Caroline. You should've been one of us."

 _Since when are you a part of anything?_ Caroline opened her mouth to ask, but she was struck dumb, Katherine's fingers playing with her curls, smiling wickedly down at her. It was strange to hear her talk about Elena when in the dark she looked like her at the end of a bad day, Elena when she decided she'd had enough and wanted to got out, have _fun_ , dragging them all along.

"Well," she said, trying to regain her footing, "I'm not."

Katherine laughed, throwing her head back, and Caroline hated herself for noticing how beautiful, how delicious, how smooth her long white neck looked. "Yet," she whispered, and she placed a red, open-mouthed kiss along Caroline's jugular, making her jump, "there's still time."

Caroline tried to struggle out of the forceful embrace but for a while Katherine refused to let go, kept kissing and nibbling at Caroline's neck, unperturbed. Her strength was so superior it seemed to be child's play for her to keep Caroline's hands tied at the small of her back, bent backwards over the balcony as if she was going to threaten her with precipitation again. Caroline's right shoulder was mashed against the grainy wall, every movement making it rap on the stone.

"Let me go," she hissed. Panic was flooding her entire body; her head was cloudy with lust that felt like it had been wrung out of her. She shoved at Katherine more forcefully, to little effect. "If you don't let me go in the next ten seconds I swear I'll make you regret the days Klaus was the one chasing you."

Abruptly, Katherine let go. Caroline reeled. She rested her palms on the metal railing, breathed in, shocked. Katherine had to know it was an empty threat, that if Katherine could do this to her, how could Caroline… Without thinking she raised her hand to her neck. Her fingers came back with a smear of lipstick-red. Katherine's mouth looked a mess, like she's just been nose-deep into someone's blood.

She wiped at it with the back of her hand. "How furious," she said, almost wonderingly. She reached out for Caroline and Caroline snapped her teeth at her, her fangs hurting her lower lip as she did. Blood trickled down her chin, hot.

The music was still pounding in the distance. Underneath Caroline the void was gaping. She had to take a moment to breathe; then she pushed herself off the railing and tried to squeeze through the small entrance to the balcony without touching Katherine. Katherine let her.

"You know," she said, perfectly, disturbingly still, "we're not so different, you and I." When Caroline raised a skeptical eyebrow Katherine just looked at her, impassive. "Did you know I used to be named Katerina? Of course you knew that; I've gotten quite famous over the last few decades, haven't I? Well, Katerina was a good girl. She was such a good girl —or at least she tried to be, until she got knocked up by some random she had the misfortune of falling for, because isn't that always what happens to girls like us? I know all about your little wolf friend's tragedy. I don't care; I know it ends. The point—" She came closer and this time Caroline let her, mesmerized, "the point is, Katerina was a good girl until she wasn't, until she became a sacrifice so some douchebag could get more power. And then me. You think I'm so bad, Caroline Forbes? You think I'm the villain, the woman you never want to become? That's because I'm the future. I'm what you become when you've got nowhere to run. I'm not ashamed of it."

 _Obviously_ , Caroline thought, dazed; she couldn't remember ever seeing Katherine with her head so much as bowed. She would never kneel to anyone: that was what a life of running bought you.

"One day, Caroline," said Katherine, and her mouth was red all over and she looked like a wolf on the prowl, glorious and slightly unhinged, "someone will push you in a corner you won't be able to sweet-talk your way out of. Some day the big bad wolf won't fall for your baby blues and will want to tear you limb from limb instead, and you'll understand what I mean. _You_ 're the one that lives forever. Not Elena Gilbert, and not your husband—you. So," she titled up Caroline's chin with one red-nailed finger under Caroline's chin, "may I?"

Caroline blinked. For a second the world was completely silent, and she ran through her options in her head: run; pretend she didn't understand; surrender. It was the same kind of torturous propensity to surrender that had made her fall into Klaus's embrace last time, some traitorous nerve inside of her. She thought about Elena in their hotel room, and Adaeze saying that there was no bringing Tyler back, and Malia in the morning light. She thought about Klaus in his empty warehouse with his bottle of Château Margaux. She thought about what Katherine had said, about them being alike —she thought about the way none of it had sounded like a lie. And wasn't a revelation like that enough to make a girl want to get spectacularly drunk and lose her mind, forget about everything? Only it was hard to get drunk for a vampire. This—wasn't this as close—

"Yeah," she whispered. She cleared her throat. "Yeah," she repeated. "Okay."

She was pressed against the wall, the corridor open like a missed opportunity and Katherine was still coming closer, the music beating through the wall and rocking through Caroline's body. Katherine's hair was a halo around her face; she didn't look entirely human, her eyes blown-up and black, her lips too red. Caroline forgot to be afraid.

"You know," Katherine said slowly, just before kissing her, "you were always my favorite."

She swallowed Caroline's answering gasp —not surprise, but something like hypothermic shock—, her lips hot and stinging against Caroline's. Her hand curled possessively around Caroline's hip, her fingers digging into the sliver of exposed skin. When she pressed forward Caroline didn't resist, opened her mouth to the brutal, bruising kiss, Katherine's tongue sliding against her own, the tip of her fangs hidden under the flesh. Katherine kissed like she was trying to convince her, to fashion her into something more suitable for the future, crawl under her skin and remake her; she kissed deep and dark and unyielding, and if Caroline had been able to think at all she would have been horrified at herself for liking it.

Katherine pulled away long after any of them would have needed to breathe if they were human, and Caroline followed her mouth blindly, without thinking, falling forward. The wind was warm like syrup on her skin and Caroline felt flushed with pleasure; she thought, this is what I was searching for. This is why I came here. So she didn't stop herself, leant up to catch Katherine's mouth again, her legs bent and one knee between Katherine's, though she wasn't sure how that had happened. Katherine's eyes sharpened like she was hesitating —then she lunged forward again and crushed Caroline against the wall, wedged her thigh between Caroline's legs, hands keeping her shoulders in place. Caroline couldn't help a moan, twisting her hands in Katherine's hair.

It was… it was overwhelming, for one, and insane, and it felt _good_ like nothing had felt good since Tyler's death. Katherine Pierce kissed you and it was like swimming in bleach, like forgetting everything you had been before: something you came out of with scrubbed-raw skin and seared lips, wondering what that shard of ice in your heart was doing there. When Caroline thought about it she was surprised to find that she _wasn't_ surprised, not really. Her thing for bad guys was documented, after all —and who batted better for the dark side than Katherine fucking Pierce, the tragic Katerina Petrova with her endless machinations and her fierce, desperate will to survive?

She pressed forward and Katherine keened a little in surprise at the violence of the kiss. In a way it was a victory, getting one over Katherine Pierce, always so unfazed about everything, always coming out of the shadows with her full hand of cards, secrets no-one was ever sure how and where she got.

Caroline leaned back a fraction. The overwhelming urge was to clamp her hands over her mouth, oh-my-God-what-have-I-done style, but she just breathed, "I'm not going to get my guts ripped out by some Original or the other for this, am I?" against Katherine's mouth.

Katherine looked back at her with no trace of humor, just the faint imprint of a smirk over her lips. "I thought you liked taking risks," she said. "Tempting fate and all that."

She held Caroline's gaze, unblinking, and for a second Caroline could've sworn that she knew about that time at her wedding; but it was impossible, how would _Katherine_ , of all people—

Katherine didn't give her the opportunity to finish that thought; her mouth was on Caroline's again and blood was rushing in Caroline's ears, Katherine's fingers hard on her jaw, lips feather-soft against Caroline's until she deepened the kiss and it was a fight again. Caroline didn't mind. The last person she'd kissed— the last person she'd kissed had been Tyler and it was a perfunctory kiss, the kiss of married people who know they're going to kiss again the next morning, and the one after that. But Katherine was always on the run. She woke up in a different city every dawn, in a different bed; the people who loved her —were there even any of those left?— stayed behind, or tried to hunt her down and failed.

(Would Elena kiss like that? Caroline couldn't help but wonder. No, of course she wouldn't. Elena was—Elena was a lot of things, and she was surprising, at times, and she was different with different people, changeable, terrifying, but if there was one thing she wasn't like it was Katherine Pierce. Still: it was the shape of her lips Caroline was kissing; her cupid's bow. If she— oh, it didn't matter.)

"Miss Forbes," came a voice from the darkness, silky as a glove. A shiver ran down Caroline's spine —guilt, probably— and she jerked backwards, the imprint of Katherine's lips suddenly burning on her own. She felt addled.

Elijah Mikaelson was standing in front of them, impassive as ever, three fingers wrapped around the stem of a martini glass. He wasn't looking at Caroline; his eyes were fixed on Katherine's outline in the darkness, the long smooth line of her body where it was pressed against Caroline's, voracious. Caroline waited for something to explode.

But Katherine just peeled herself off her body, calm as you please; she pressed her thumb to her bottom lip to wipe the smeared lipstick off her mouth. Caroline couldn't help but look and she saw Elijah look too, his eyes dropping to her mouth, their gazes meeting in the middle.

"We're past all that formality, don't you think?" Katherine asked lightly. "'Caroline' would do at this point. She did sleep with your brother, after all."

The ensorcelled look vanished from Elijah's eyes, quickly replaced by familiar annoyance. His lips pinched. "I recall," he said coolly. "Niklaus did always have some trouble with… impulse control."

Caroline glared at him, showing teeth but Katherine laughed and touched his wrist with two fingers. Caroline tried to convince herself that her whole body wasn't still buzzing with adrenaline, without much success.

"Don't spoil my fun," Katherine said, almost tender.

She moved away from Caroline and slotted against Elijah's side, their dark, timeless silhouettes melting into each other with disturbing ease. One hand fanned on her hip, Elijah took half a step forward as though he really did want to talk to Caroline about something; but something halted him and he ducked his head —quickly, so quickly Caroline probably wouldn't have noticed had her eyes not sharpened when her fangs had grown out all those years ago—, breathing in Katherine's scent for a millisecond, eyes shut—

And then: "Miss Forbes," Katherine pouted when he said it, "I believe we have urgent matters to discuss."

"Do we?"

"You've been searching for my brother."

"Yeah." Caroline didn't mention that she'd already seen him. If Elijah didn't know —if Klaus hadn't told him, well…

"Why?"

Caroline tried to wipe the kiss off her lips, discreetly; Elijah's gaze followed her movements, precise as a needle. "It's none of your business," she said eventually.

His mouth quirked in what could have been the beginning of a smile, had his face been capable of actually expressing emotions. "I think you'll find that isn't quite true, Miss Forbes."

"Isn't the point of being four hundred years old that you don't need a babysitter?"

Katherine snickered in her fist, and Elijah's hand slid up to her waist and squeezed hard. It looked painful, but Katherine didn't so much as flinch.

"Niklaus—my brother has been known to make some regrettable choices in the past. Especially when it comes to you."

Caroline took a step back, unsure how to respond to that. Most of the time she preferred to pretend that whatever there was between her and Klaus only happened there, between the two of them; that it was unfathomable, an anomaly of nature, and didn't bear any consequences on the rest of her life. It made things easier.

"I don't give a shit about foiling whatever plan he's hatching up this time," she said eventually. "He could blow Central Park for all I care. I told her," she nodded to Katherine, "­I'm not searching for a fight. I'll be gone tomorrow. I just wanted a night on my own, so if that's your only concern, well, you can go dance the macarena. Have fun."

Elijah didn't look amused. "There is something to be said for knowing what's happening around you," he said matter-of-factly. "How did you think my siblings and I survived until now? It's about… well, it's about the bigger picture, I suppose you could say. Imagine it as a game of chess."

He wasn't threatening —he never was threatening, not outright, was never outrageous like Klaus— but it was obvious that his question was an order. Ten years ago Caroline would have tried to run, and he would have caught her by the throat and thrown her on the ground. She assessed her chances. They were stronger than her, even individually —and as much as she didn't want to tell them about Tyler, it wasn't like they weren't going to find out at some point, was it?

"I had something to talk to him about. About Tyler."

Elijah's eyes widened incrementally. "What does your husband have to do with this? It's not—" his face twisted into a mildly disdainful expression, as though the mere idea was repulsive in its inappropriateness, "another tryst, I hope?"

Katherine and Caroline laughed at the same time, Katherine low and mocking and Caroline a little punched-out. "No, it's not." Relief slackened Elijah's face a fraction.. Which made sense, when you thought about it; most of the problems he'd had to deal with the last few years were the result of Klaus's whorish tendencies.

Elijah's eyes focused on her once again, impossibly sharp. "What happened?"

Caroline breathed in. It never did get easier, did it? Saying it. "Tyler is dead."

Surprise registered clearly on his face ­— not Katherine's. But didn't all survivors expect everyone else to die, those who weren't fighting as hard as they were? Or maybe she didn't share her secrets, even with him. It didn't seem that far-fetched either, actually.

"All my condolences," Elijah said. "He was brave."

"Among other things," said Caroline, trying for light-hearted and missing by a landslide. "I thought you were the one on top of the gossip in the family?"

Elijah titled his head, reluctant. His gaze rested on Katherine for a brief second, loaded with something heavy and precious, myrrh, incense. "I've been… distracted, let's say."

Caroline laughed out loud, "I bet you have."

There was a moment of silence, what Caroline assumed passed for grieving among them, two giant indestructible beings standing silent side by side, dressed to the nines, sparing a minute to think about the ones that had died before moving on. Or maybe it was something else—maybe it was just for her. They probably didn't care about Tyler dying at all; they both killed people at the drop of a hat.

"What does my brother have to do with your husband's death?" Elijah asked, suddenly back to business. "I suppose you—" His gaze got sharp and ever-so-slightly amused; besides him Katherine appeared to have gotten bored with the conversation altogether and was sipping on Elijah's drink, "—or rather Elena Gilbert, suspect Klaus of being behind his death? I'm right in assuming it wasn't a natural death." It wasn't a question.

"You don't have anything to worry about. I didn't think it was him in the first place."

"And you're sure of it now," Elijah completed. The mind-reader act was getting old, Caroline thought. "Though it wasn't a completely unreasonable suspicion, to Elena's credit." Elena, Caroline noticed. Not 'Miss Gilbert'. "Niklaus always did have tremendous fondness for you, hard as it may be to believe."

Katherine looked up from the drink and smiled at Caroline, insolent and glittering. "Not that hard to believe," Caroline said before she could stop herself, affecting a mirth she didn't feel. Of course she'd wondered. She still did. "I'm amazing. I'm first-class."

Katherine made a loose fist with the hand that wasn't holding Elijah's drink, the red nails protruding from between her fingers like smears of blood, and held it up over her head, pumping it in the air twice. It was mocking, but Caroline didn't mind.

"I'm sure you are," Elijah said indulgently. "May I inquire as to who _did_ kill him?"

"We're still working on that," Caroline said.

Elijah raised an eyebrow, looking pointedly between Katherine and Caroline. "Yes," he said slowly, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I can see that."

"I'm not sure you're one to talk, what with you know, the rekindling the flame with Catwoman here instead of taking over the world."

Elijah's eyes flashed, maybe amusement or maybe anger because she had taken it too far. For a second it looked like he might reach forward, tear out the railing and jam it through her throat. But he didn't. He titled his head, conceding.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said again. Katherine hooked an arm into his and leant her head against his shoulder, looking as dangerous as ever. "And call us if you need help with the bodies," she cooed.

"I don't think we're at that stage yet," Caroline said, and Katherine laughed open-throated because it was a perfect opening and she said, "What gets me in your good graces then, Caroline Forbes? What exactly do I need to kiss?"

Elijah made what could generously be called a moue behind her, leading her to the narrow entrance of the balcony. Katherine's smile flashed one last time, the curl of vermillion offset against the luscious cotton of Elijah's suit, and then Caroline was alone on the balcony again. Silence rushed into her ears; she felt like she had escaped a great danger. There was still music streaming in from the inside, as though nothing had happened at all.

She rested her back against the cold wall, trying to process the conversation. The kiss was still at the back of her mind: the stinging bite of Katherine's lips, her laughter, her long, serpentine hands wrapped around Caroline's throat… It shouldn't have been attractive, really, any of it, but sometimes Caroline felt like she was wired differently since her death, because now she liked glowing eyes and sharp teeth and being slammed into walls. But maybe it had been like that before too. Maybe she just hadn't wanted to notice.

She took out a small mirror out of her pocket ­—one of the few things she hadn't left behind, that Barbie-pink mirror studded with fake diamonds—; when she opened it she looked disorderly and a little stunned. She spent a few minutes putting on gloss, making eyes at the small oval to convince herself she was still in control. It was only when she caught, at the very edge of the block of sound of the club, the drum-tight heartbeat she had come here to seek before giving into the need for one night without strife, that she stilled. Should she go? Hayley deserved a thank you for giving her Klaus's location; on the other hand there was no return address on that envelope, no sign that she wanted to be followed. In the end she was the one who'd taken Caroline's promises to Elena the most seriously: she'll be gone tomorrow, and then we'll never hear of her again. Caroline could say it now­: looking for her had just been an excuse.

On the other hand… Katherine was right: it couldn't be a coincidence that they were all in the same place at the same time, that Hayley had been searching for Elijah and now the only thing between them —if that; if they hadn't already found each other— was the thumping crowd. Not to mention that Katherine was there and that had to change the stakes, too. Hayley hadn't sounded afraid when she'd asked Caroline if she knew her —Caroline doubted she was afraid of much anything, after everything that had happened— but she'd been appropriately wary, as though aware of her inevitable defeat in that particular square-off. Caroline… well, Caroline was smart enough to know that she ought to keep away from the whole thing —it didn't concern her at all, really— and herself enough that she was just dying to watch the drama unfold. She snapped the little mirror shut and headed back inside.

For a split second the tight, hot atmosphere of the room disoriented her and she couldn't do anything but blink stupidly, trying to find her bearings. A vampire constitution was in any situation a mixed blessing, because it came with its load of abilities —sight, smell, violence— but also with an overwhelming amount of information which wasn't always easy to triage. Parsing through the heartbeats to make out Hayley's was still a surreal experience even years after her transformation. But she did, and it was there, muffled by a thick velour curtain and an intricate network of weaved rope and there was a low growl surrounding it, the uncertain rumbling of an animal who didn't know whether to surge or to surrender. Caroline followed it blindly, closing her eyes to let the incandescence of it guide her. When she opened them again a wiry, dangerous-looking vampire was looking down at her, one hand folded over the breastpocket of his suit. Caroline thought, if Klaus's thugs had been like this guy maybe I wouldn't have gotten in as easily.

"Caroline Forbes," she said, with all the commanding haughtiness she could muster.

The man just kept staring at her impassively. For a beat Caroline feared he wouldn't let her in and she would have to cause a scene in the middle of the club —she let her blood run hot, revving the engine—; but eventually he nodded and unclasped the rope, sweeping a mildly deferent hand. Caroline slid past him, letting her eyes adjust to the obscurity. There were different depths of darkness in the room: the first immediately before her, where a sparse crowd of evidently wealthy vampires was sprawled on sumptuous couches, engaged in all sorts of activities; the area just behind the long gleaming bar, with Katherine leaning along its length, flirting with the bartender; and the room in the back, where Hayley and Elijah were talking. Well, talking.

Without thinking, Caroline beelined for Katherine, who didn't turn around until Caroline was almost pressed along her back, opening her mouth to talk.

"Already missed me, did you?" she grinned, all teeth, turning around dramatically. "I have to admit, I wouldn't have pegged you for the clingy type." The bartender deposited a neon orange drink in front of her. Katherine flashed him a dazzling smile. "Thanks, babe."

"Do you compel them all not to charge you for what you drink?" Caroline asked, in the absence of Elena.

"Oh, I don't need to compel them. They come of their own free will." Katherine took a sip, sucking obscenely on her straw. She clicked her tongue. "So you're here for the spectacle, I take it?"

"I—" Caroline didn't have a response to that, so she said what was closest to the truth, "I have to talk to Hayley anyway. Seeing you get rejected is just a bonus."

"You think I'm getting rejected?" Katherine laughed. Her mouth smelled of sugar and alcohol, and Caroline had to fight herself not to tip forward. Katherine drew up and peered into Caroline's face, unbearably sharp for a moment, "No, you don't. And Hayley doesn't need you to see her, I'm going to conjecture. You just want to taste it." She was delighted. "Well, come on."

She tugged on Caroline's arm and though Caroline would have denied it to the grave she came willingly. The room in which Hayley's heartbeat had been ricocheting off of Elijah's was separated from the main area with a door, but between them was a small antechamber, an alcove that sheltered them from the thick syrupy murmur of the lounge. The door was ajar. Katherine pushed Caroline against it, face first.

"Get off me," Caroline said, out of habit, but Katherine's spindly hand closed on the nape of her neck, and "Shush," she said, rubbing one finger in small circles in the dip of Caroline's right collarbone. "Pay attention."

"—leave," Hayley was saying. Her body was angled towards Elijah, but they weren't touching. "I just wanted to—"

She didn't finish her sentence. Elijah was watching her. His eyes were black, but Caroline couldn't tell if it was from desire, pain or just their natural disposition.

Hayley's eyes dropped to the floor. She looked miserable: her forehead was sweaty, body bunched with nerves. "This was stupid," she said. "I shouldn't have come."

"No," Elijah said simply when she started heading towards the door. In a blink his fingers were around her wrist. They traced her palm; Caroline felt like a voyeur.

She pushed back against Katherine's now-slack grip and they tumbled backwards, Katherine keeping them up with what would have seemed like unnatural agility had anyone in the lounge been even remotely paying attention.

"This isn't—" she started. "I don't want— I didn't come here to see this."

Katherine smiled. "I know, but isn't it fun?" She held her drink out to Caroline. Caroline ignored it. She snapped her fingers at the bartender, who winked at her and nodded. Katherine wasn't the only one who could ensnare cute humans, after all. "Still think I'm being rejected?" Katherine asked.

Caroline didn't say anything, but her face probably gave her away, because Katherine pouted. "I thought you were smarter than this, Caroline. Where's all that wit and beauty queen brains now? You still think we're like wolves," she scrunched up her nose in disdain at the word, "mating for life until we get massacred by one crazy witch or the other? Well," she let out a thin sigh like a whistle, "Klaus did say you were missing out on the advantages of our condition."

Hayley's heartbeat sped up in the next room and Caroline couldn't help but picture her lips crushed against Elijah's, his hands tangled in her hair. She pointedly didn't look at the embrasure of the door.

"But it's sweet, really, that you're concerned," Katherine was saying. "What would you do to avenge my honor, Caroline?"

"I've watched you die once," Caroline said. "I wouldn't mind doing it again."

Katherine didn't seem affected overmuch. "I have learned to fend for myself over the years."

And that was it, for a while: Caroline was antsy and jumpy but she didn't leave, couldn't leave, Katherine was back to sitting on her stool, making simpering faces at the bartender now dividing his attention between the two of them, and in the next room Elijah and Hayley were kissing like there was no tomorrow, her back pressed against the wall, an obvious patch of diffuse red heat. She had something to say, Caroline could feel it even at this distance —though she refused to think about how she already knew what Hayley was like when she had something to say, coiled and angry and waiting— but she couldn't say it now, not when Elijah's hands were pressing her forward, palms splayed and pushing at the space between her shoulder-blades.

When she couldn't hold it anymore she asked Katherine, "Aren't you jealous?"

Katherine tore her predatory eyes from a long, voluptuous woman who had just entered the lounge. "That was burning your tongue, wasn't it? I could almost hear the sizzle."

"Elijah's—" Caroline gestured at the door.

"A big boy," Katherine finished for her, "who knows what he's doing. Oh, Caroline." She came close, touched Caroline's hip with two fingers. Caroline batted her hand away. "You think I don't want to tear wolfie's little neck? You think I couldn't?"

"Then why don't you?"

"Marriage isn't for people like us, honey," Katherine said. "I thought you'd caught onto that. It doesn't work."

Caroline tried to find a way to ask, how do you tamp down that possessive urge that's always simmering beneath, how do you fight down the need to whip out your fangs and tear her away from him? In the room Hayley said, "I don't have a hundred years," and "You love girls who die before it can get difficult," even though Katherine was right there. Elijah said, "I could turn you if that's what you wish." Then Hayley just laughed, jagged.

Katherine's voice was like a shard of glass cutting Caroline from the scene. "The rules aren't the same. I'd kill that tramp twice if I could, but Elijah told me something the first time he spared my life by going against Klaus' orders. You wanna know what he said?" Caroline nodded wordlessly. "He said that now I was free. He said I knew how to survive and that was why I was still there, and he said that he was going to let me go because now he was sure he would know how to find me again." She made a face. "I know, cheesy, right? But the point is, we're free. That girl is five minutes in my eternity. She doesn't deserve the calories I'd burn tearing her throat."

Caroline dipped her lips into her drink. The icy cold burned her. Her cheeks were hot. "I'm leaving," said Hayley. Elijah asked where, but Hayley didn't answer. Probably she knew as well as Caroline the Originals' history of chasing after people, of refusing to give up, to forgive or forget.

"Oh," Katherine laughed, "you still have a lot to learn."

"Why are you still here, though?" Caroline asked, because she'd always defended herself by attacking. "A little masochistic fun to spice up the relationship?"

"There's nothing wrong with keeping an eye on things," Katherine said, and Caroline hated herself for understanding it, this need to always be in control.

There was a silence. Then Caroline asked, "What if he leaves with her?"

"He won't."

"What if he does?"

Katherine sighed. "Then he leaves with her. Then they live fifty years of boring werewolf subgrade happiness, his soul starves, his heart shrivels and he thinks that means redemption." She smiled; her teeth shone white in the darkness. "Then she dies, and he comes back to me."

"You'd take him back even after something like that?"

"I'm tired of running after things," Hayley said. Caroline would have liked to say she understood, but she didn't. The chase was always half the fun. Hayley was an animal too; wasn't it supposed to be carved into her bones?

"Don't make yourself more stupid than you are, Caroline. As fun as snapping someone's neck once in a while is, that's not what I mean when I say freedom. Elijah," this time she looked straight at the door, almost through it, tall and unafraid, "belongs to me. He's always belonged to me, and he always will. And he can run," Caroline saw, reflected in the golden brown of her pupils, underlined by the tar-black kohl, _and I can run_ , "but it will still be true, and he will come back to me every time, just like you come back here, where the blood is pumping. Because you can't keep away. That's not who you are."

Her words were poisonous: Caroline hadn't seen searching for Klaus as _coming back_ but now that she thought about it this way it was all too obvious. Of course she was coming back —why would she have been unselfish when nothing in the past predisposed her to be? Suddenly the need to avenge Tyler felt dirty, a flimsy excuse to put herself back in the center of the whirlwind, feel the current tear through her. Caroline felt sick.

Katherine didn't notice her discomfort, or she didn't care. "They've been telling you what forever feels like, haven't they? They told you how limitless and glorious it is. Klaus —he's been trying to ensnare you for a long time. They did the same with me. They thought teaching me meant owning me. Hayley's wrong: Elijah used to love girls and kill them, and now he loves me. You should have listened when they told you my story. They brought me to be a sacrifice, but —and that's where I tip my hat to Elena, you know, I do like her, family's family— I didn't want to die, so I didn't."

"Simple as that," said Caroline, but what she'd intended as sarcasm came out like honesty. Hayley's arms around Elijah were a vice, and his fangs were drawing blood from her mouth.

"Cake," Katherine said, as though Caroline didn't know the stories about that long hunt, too, decade after decade of hiding, of running scared. "Trust me, Caroline Forbes; those rules will take your hand, they'll put the stake in it, and they will kill you." She pressed a hard kiss to Caroline's mouth, bruising and proprietary. Caroline didn't resist. "Make your own."

Everything in Mystic Falls had concurred to make Caroline think that immortality meant settling once and for all the question of who you were and just going on with it, but as always Katherine refused to fit into the mold. At least, and for all that it didn't make his constant offers and temptations bearable, Klaus was somewhat predictable; but Katherine was slippery as an eel, always grinning before wriggling from between your fingers. It made sense that Klaus had never been able to trap her; it made sense, too, that Caroline had never hated her as much as she was wary of her, always trying —and failing— to anticipate her next move.

But one thing she remembered about all the Katherines she'd known over the years, even the one who'd hid in Elena's body for a while, giving Caroline's best friend sharper edges that Caroline had felt guilty for liking after, is that she cared about Stefan. That had been her method of choice for crushing Damon's heart, what had sent him hurtling into Caroline's arms like the douchiest, most manipulative manwhore on the planet —Katherine telling him just how much she'd never cared for him, that it had always been Stefan and it would always be him. Caroline couldn't say she didn't get it; Stefan was a forever kind of guy.

So she asked —she didn't really care at this point about sounding like a kid who wanted to know the whole story, who wanted to understand how the world works, since Katherine didn't seem all that opposed to teaching her—, "What about Stefan?"

Katherine's smile looked like it had been whetted with broken glass. "Stefan loves the version of me who smiles and shuts up."

Caroline frowned. "That's not—"

"Come on, Caroline." Katherine's sharp eyes angled to her. "It's just us girls, isn't it? I love Stefan too, but he lost his balls in the twenties and since then he's been cowering over true love and keeping a _diary_. You know that as well as I do."

"Stefan rejected you because you betrayed him," Caroline said.

"Semantics," Katherine said, just as a moan —Hayley— broke the silence in the next room. At the back of the lounge a couple's heads perked up at the same time, a man and a woman, and they laughed.

"Don't you think we should—" _break this up_ , Caroline almost said, because her childhood did involve manners being drilled into her; but Katherine didn't care.

"Let her get it out of her system. She's going to need those memories when she's out there on her own." There was no sympathy in Katherine's voice.

"I thought you said you'd let them go."

"I would, if they were. But Elijah's not going to leave me, not now, and he's certainly not going to leave his brother. Those two are tight as bullets in a gun chamber." She leaned in incrementally. "Listen carefully, honey, because I'm not going to say this twice: we might look the same, your girlfriend and me, but we're not. I've lived longer than she ever will. You think I've never been young and dumb? You think I was born evil, right?"

 _No_ , Caroline thought. She didn't. She never had. This was the only part she'd listened to in church, love the sinner and not the sin; now it seemed like she'd been stocking for future offenses, to protect herself from the wrath of God, to be able to say, look, you have to love me. It's written.

But Katherine didn't care about that either.

"It takes more than dancing on charcoal to become like me," she said. "You tell that to your girl: it's easy to be good when there's a choice. But you and I, we know how it is, don't we?"

Hayley shivered so hard that for a second Caroline thought she was going to bring the building down. She closed her eyes to block out the sound.

When she opened them again Katherine had retreated back to the bar, her slouch liquid and melodious like there had been no conversation at all. Maybe there hadn't; right now, in the delirious half-light of this lunge filled with monsters, it didn't seem entirely impossible that Caroline might have dreamed it all up. But then Katherine smiled at her from over the rim of her drink, fingers tight around rope-like crystal, and— it wasn't a dream.

"Question is," Katherine said, but now that she was a few feet away from Caroline it didn't feel as much like her voice was infiltrating Caroline's thoughts, stealing her will from her, "what are you still doing here? Didn't you tell me you just wanted to dance and forget all about us big bad wolves?"

"I—" Caroline had had an excuse ready on the tip of her tongue, but now she couldn't find it. Instead she said, "Someone has to keep an eye on the two of you. It's not like you destroy everything you touch, right?"

"The world has been doing fine without you for a few hundreds of centuries," Katherine said, not cutting. "You should go home. If you stay here longer I might remember we're supposed to be enemies."

What a strange night, Caroline thought. From searching for Hayley to being kissed by Katherine to finding Hayley like this, to this conversation…

"And then what?"

"Then I'll pop those pretty little eyeballs with my brand new Louboutins and make sure there's no body to recognize when they start searching for you," Katherine said matter-of-factly, almost bored. "Which would be a pity." Caroline couldn't say if she meant that for Caroline or for her shoes; both possibilities seemed about as likely.

Katherine handed Caroline a drink so red it looked like freshly-drawn blood. "Here," she smirked, "they call it Red Riding Hood." She leaned in to add, as though in confidence, "The bartender named it after me."

Caroline couldn't help but arch an eyebrow. "Doesn't seem all that fitting." She took a sip; the taste bloomed on her tongue, rich and sour with just a hint of salt. It wasn't blood, but it was good, dizzying.

"You never know what's hiding behind a hood and a pretty face," said Katherine, her voice heavy with stormy laughter, as she swept past Caroline and into the room where Hayley and Elijah were still breathing hard, their composedness ripped to shreds. A handful of seconds after she'd disappeared the brush of her hand on Caroline's hip was still smarting and her words, "Good night, Caroline."

Caroline hightailed out of the club as fast as she could; holding onto that plausible deniability would be exponentially harder once she started to hear bones breaking.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings:** this has all-the-way f/f action between elena and caroline —this chapter is probably the brunt of it. main pairings this chapter are caroline/elena (kind of? platonic sex?) and caroline/klaus.
> 
> this is also the end of part i (finally!)—part ii should be roughly the same length and should alternate between klaus pov (with a significant part happening before the start of caroline pov in this part, filling in stuff during the ten years between mystic falls and tyler's death) and caroline pov, most of it set in peru.

_No more secrets_ , had said Elena, her voice tinny over the phone; _no more secrets from now on_ and Caroline hadn't laughed, hadn't said that Elena wouldn't recognize herself, or Caroline, without secrets dangling against their collarbones like a necklace, because they'd had them since childhood and how would they even _work_ without secrets? But okay. _Okay_ , was what she'd said; she didn't want Elena to be mad, wanted to keep her near, a shield, an armor. 

And what now? Caroline was leaning against the doorjamb of the bathroom, cheeks still sticky with Katherine's glitter despite the shower she'd just taken, and Elena was awake in the bed, not even trying to pretend otherwise. What now? There was an equilibrium to reconquer but Caroline wasn't sure —was this secret even really one, was keeping it such an infraction, it was just a tiny little kiss, what people called a drunken mistake… but then that thing with Klaus had been a mistake too, hadn't it, and Elena had gone mad over it. She'd want to know.

"I kissed Katherine," she said before she could talk herself out of it, plucking courage from the small amount of alcohol and exhilaration still running in her veins, Katherine's bloodred drink, her nails, her stained mouth.

Elena's eyelids flew open in the darkness. The sun had started rising a few floors down, red as murder. Caroline remembered Tyler teaching her to tell time in the forest, from the moss and the stars and the direction of the wind: in two hours it'd be a pale dawn stripping the earth of shadows.

"What?" said Elena, like a whisper. "When?"

Caroline swallowed. "Earlier tonight. I went to a club. I wanted —I needed to let go. I was searching for Hayley, and then…"

"Why were you searching for Hayley?"

"I like when things end the right way," Caroline said. "Closure, you know. I wanted to say thank you for the address."

It was clear that Elena didn't understand —she'd been glad to have Hayley finally gone, that much was obvious— but she just nodded. She sat up in the bed, her muscles coiled. The force of her gaze pierced the obscurity, and Caroline felt mounting in her ribcage the same rueful anger that had driven her away two nights before: why does she care? Why does everyone have to be up to her standards? I'm not a saint.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and Caroline was about to push her hip away from the door, find something to occupy her hands, when Elena said, soft and bewildered, " _Why_?" She wasn't talking about Hayley anymore.

"I was drunk," Caroline said immediately, but it wasn't entirely true. "I don't know. I felt like it."

 _It seemed like a good idea at the time,_ she thought about saying, but it hadn't, it had never seemed like a good idea. It wasn't. (It wasn't a good idea, but Katherine's lips looked so inviting in the darkness, and besides… kiss a doppelganger, kiss them all, right? Caroline couldn't say she'd never thought about it.)

"Is that something you do?"

"She was there, I was there. It just happened." She raked a hand through her damp hair. "I don't know, Elena. I'm just telling you because of what you said… no secrets. I'm not apologizing for anything, I'm done doing that."

"Okay," said Elena, her voice so neutral Caroline couldn't tell if she was mad or not. Usually she was really bad at pretending; she couldn't even do accents, couldn't be anything else than what she was, it was infuriating. Could you really call it growing up if it just meant learning to lie better?

"Okay? That's all you have to say about it?"

Elena looked away, uncomfortable. "What do you want me to say?"

Caroline could have just slapped her.

"Well, you freaked out about me and Klaus fucking before the wedding, so I'd expect my bisexual adventures to have some effect, yeah." She couldn't help the bitchiness when she was frustrated; besides, Elena deserved it for being so obtuse and righteous about everything.

"It's your life, Care. It's not my problem if you mess it up."

"Since when? It was always your problem, since we were ten —since we were in fucking diapers actually. Elena Gilbert, righter of wrongs, or do you not do that any more?"

"I never—"

"Wait," Caroline interrupted her, taken in by her anger, "have you suddenly decided you're going to stop meddling in everyone's lives and trying to make us _better_ , trying to get us up to your ridiculous standard?"

"No, you're right, _Care_ ," Elena almost spit the nickname, her back straight as a rod, "I'd better just let you sleep with all of our enemies, right? Since you seem to be enjoying it so much."

Caroline made a wordless noise of fury. "Really? That's what you're going with? Calling me a whore? Do you have any _idea_ what it's been like for me all those years, Elena? What am I saying, of course you don't. You've been too busy playing house with the guy who raped me when I was _sixteen_."

"That's not what happened, he just—"

"That's exactly what happened! You just don't want to admit it. I'm fine with admitting I've made mistakes, Elena, I know I have, but I'm not the only one."

"I know who Damon is, I never tried to pretend the contrary. He was trying to redeem himself, and I wanted to help him."

"Right. Right. You just conveniently ignored my feelings and worried about his instead, and you made _me_ seem like I was just a petulant little bitch because I didn't like your boyfriend. And you know what? I got over it. I got over it like I got over every horrible thing you did to me, whether you meant them or not, because I love you."

"Every horrible thing? What the hell are you talking about? I've done nothing but help you and support you, Caroline. God knows I could have walked away, after all the shit you pulled."

"There we go, that's number one on the list, blaming me for every fucking thing I do. And what about letting Bonnie martyr herself over you over and over again? Taking up with Stefan and Damon and screwing our lives up forever and never, ever saying, oh I don't know, sorry your world got turned on its head? If that's your version of helping and supporting I'll pass, thanks but no thanks."

Elena was watching her with wide betrayed eyes and Caroline knew she was being cruel, was the thing, she knew Elena was blaming herself for those things, for being the one everyone followed and died for —but it wasn't like she did anything to change it, was it? She _liked_ being the first, the brightest, the shining star. Hell, Caroline would have liked it. It was just time Elena admit it now, after all those years.

Tears started sliding down her cheek, tantalizingly slow. Caroline wiped them away angrily.

"I love you, Elena, you know that, and I wouldn't do anything differently. I love being a vampire. But sometimes it's just… it's like you don't see us. Like we don't exist."

"Of course you exist," Elena said. "You're my best friend."

"But that's the point! That's not all I am. I'm not just Caroline, Elena's best friend and hanger-on, the ditzy blonde who occasionally does something useful like killing whatever horrible creature is after us this week. I'm—"

"I didn't know you felt that way," Elena said, and she sounded tired. Maybe Caroline was being unjust. But it was too late now — no takebacks. No secrets. Some promises you had to hold onto, or else it would all crumble.

"No," she sighed. "You didn't." 

"I just don't get it," Elena said, hiding her face in her hand. Were her eyes wet? Maybe. "I know you. I've known you since we were kids, I just —don't see how you could sleep with Klaus, after all we've been through."

Caroline squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. "Why can't you just let that Klaus thing go?"

"You _slept_ with him, Caroline!"

"It was _twice_!" She rubbed at her eyes, trying to contain her anger. When she looked back up Elena was there, waiting for an explanation, like she deserved it. Like she was entitled to it. "No, wait, you know what — I did. I did sleep with him, and it was good. It was _great_. It was the best fucking sex I had in my life."

"What?"

"I thought you didn't want any more lies. That's what you said, right?"

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Right. You wanted us to braid each other's hair and drink warm milk. Well, tough luck, Elena. Looks like everything isn't going the way you want it, for once." She was getting wound-up again, she realized. She was getting mean. But Elena deserved it, didn't she?

"Some things are just wrong," Elena said, colder than Caroline had ever heard her sound.

"No! It doesn't work like that anymore, Elena." She wanted to cry, Caroline realized, almost detached. She'd thought she wouldn't have any tears left after all the bawling she'd done in the last week —but nature was full of wonders. "You know it doesn't. We have to make our own rules."

"You don't think killing people is wrong? Maybe Klaus really has been getting to you," Elena said.

"Fuck you," Caroline choked out. "Fuck you. I woke up in a hospital room one day craving blood, you know how that felt like? I didn't have anybody coddling me and telling me I'd get used to wanting to suck the marrow out of all my friends every minute of every fucking day."

"Oh yeah, I forget how tragic your life is. It's not like all your family is dead, though, rigth? Or like you had to burn your fucking house down?"

"No one forced you!" She was yelling now, Caroline realized. No. She had wanted to avoid this so much. How much could you break before there was nothing left of you? "And at least I didn't just turn off my emotions. Way to take the easy road, right El?"

Elena's eyes could have shot arrows. "I'm sorry if I wanted to feel better for a minute! I'm sorry if I wanted to forget that my brother was dead, that I had nothing at all left in the world! You think you're the only one turning into a vampire fucked up?"

" _We_ were there! Bonnie and I, we've always been here when you need us, but you —you don't even care, do you? You know what, maybe… maybe if you'd been there when I needed to talk to someone about Klaus we wouldn't have slept together."

"Please. Everyone knew from the moment he saw you that it was going to happen."

"And that gives you the right to judge me for it?"

"I'm not the one making bad decisions every other day! I can't even turn around, what is it going to be next time, shacking up with Rebekah? How could you—you were getting married to the love of you life, Care, how was that not enough?"

 _How do you know? How could_ I _know?_ But she couldn't say that—wouldn't. She didn't want to hear it said out loud, not in her own voice, not now, Tyler's body not even cold in the county morgue… "I don't know! I don't know what it wasn't enough. I feel guilty enough about it without you yelling at me about it. I wanted to talk to you. I would've talked to you, but—"

"But what?"

"But you don't listen! You always have something more important to say, some crisis unfolding, some righteous opinion that solves everything. Why can't you just listen?"

Something like realization shifted on Elena's face. "I thought—"

"I know you did."

"But you have to admit you're wrong on some things too, Care. I'm not a saint. I'm not perfect."

"You do a hell of a good impression of it, though," Caroline said, and it was tender.

For a handful of seconds they stood face to face, unspeaking. Caroline knew —she did— that this argument had been brewing for years, decades even, all the things she'd kept buried while Elena was playing her roles one after the other, orphan little miss perfect martyr tragic heroine, while Caroline was forever relegated to second fiddle, background player. Though maybe Elena had a point —maybe Caroline really had preferred to keep pretending Elena was the measure to compare herself too, the notch on the wall Caroline could never reach even when she was standing on her tippy toes like a kid.

She felt the rage seep away, little by little, her muscles relaxing, clenched fists uncoiling. Though she wanted to stay angry a little bit more she felt bubbling in her chest a wave of grief and a strange sort of hilarity borne out of sleeplessness and the absurdity of the situation. She felt as though she were looking at herself from somewhere in the cool empty air above their heads, elbow to elbow with Tyler's ghost. There she was, shouting at her best friend in their hotel room while light gently flooded from the windows, delineating every pillow crease on their skin and bag under their eyes. She let a small exhausted laugh, almost a giggle. Elena gave her an incredulous look; for a second it looked like she might get even more pissed off but after a while her face relaxed and she started laughing too.

"I'm sorry," Elena said after a while laughing so hard they ached, suddenly serious. Little by little it ebbed back and they lay stretched over the bedding, hip to hip, not really touching or looking at each other, breathing interspersed with silent bouts of laughter. "About Damon. I'm sorry." Her voice was soft.

It was funny, because Caroline had imagined that moment so many times, when Elena would finally come to her senses and beg for forgiveness; and she'd imagined telling her, you think this is enough? At the time the betrayal had been so intense and stinging —so she's choosing him over me; so she doesn't care that I'm his used waste, his refuse; so that's how little what he did to me means to her— even though she'd hid that too, behind turtlenecks and flowery scarves and clipped, cheery smiles.

But now she couldn't find any reason not to forgive Elena. Not because her saying sorry erased everything that had happened —in fact Caroline was pretty sure Elena still didn't get it, didn't really understand—; not because Caroline had suddenly become forgiving; but simply because not having Elena in her life was a possibility she didn't even want to consider. Strange, the paths friendship went down, when you thought about it.

"It was a long time ago," she said eventually.

"Still," Elena said. "I never…"

"I know." _That's the problem_ , she would've said if there was any fight left in her. She didn't say anything.

They were curled into each other now, Caroline's back blocking the sun so that Elena's traits were shadowed by the heavy fall of her hair, and she did look sorry, her face soft and worried. Not for the first time Caroline wondered at their being friends: it had seemed inevitable at the time, in that little town with the big church and the cheerleading squad, where every pretty little girl seemed to gravitate towards a mirror version of herself… but now? Without thinking she circled Elena's wrist with her fingers —her breathing relaxed—, Elena's heartbeat slipping into her skin, and they aligned, on instinct…

"How was it," Elena asked after a long stretch of silence, her eyes unreadable, "kissing Katherine?"

Caroline thought about it, but there were no words, really. How do you describe a feeling? She shifted closer to Elena. She knew, even before doing it, that it was a dangerous thing to do, but in the last few years danger had become relative and there was no blood here, no monster of the week holding a stake to anyone's chest. There was just her best friend and a buzz under her skin from laughing and fighting, Katherine's kiss still branded on her tongue… this wasn't too bad—just another leap of faith. She rose lazily on an elbow, Elena gaze following her —with the tip of her finger she pushed a strand of hair off of Elena's forehead. Elena finally understood; she drew a breath, quick and surprised, but didn't move back. Caroline might have said something, something soothing meant to reassure her, but if she did she didn't remember.

She leaned the rest of the way in.

It was nothing like Katherine: where Katherine had shoved her against the wall and tried to set her on fire Elena made a soft, hesitant sound against her lips. For the longest time she didn't move, didn't open her mouth and they were kissing like schoolgirls, dry lips against dry lips, barely breathing at all. Caroline's heart was beating like a jackhammer. For lack of a better thing to do with it she curled her hand on Elena's hip, two fingers brushing the soft skin at Elena's waist where her T-shirt had ridden up. That was what seemed to spur her into action. Her fingers snaked at the nape of Caroline's neck and she deepened the kiss, leaning forward, her mouth tasting of toothpaste and hunger. She made a sound, not quite a moan but not quite anything else; for a brief second they were pressed against each other, chest to chest — then she pulled back.

She licked her lips, nervously.

"I," she started, but she didn't say anything else, her lips frozen around a word. What was it? What? Why? Please? More?

Apologize?

Caroline laughed, bones rattling. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not — don't —" Elena started a few sentences but couldn't choose, and eventually she, who had always been so precise and soft-spoken, grew frustrated; she grabbed Caroline's hand and pulled her back in, fit their mouths together again.

Caroline made a surprised sound against her lips. Not that she was surprised Elena wanted to kiss her again, not really —even though it was like the realization of a long-held fantasy, a childhood dream come to fruition—, but rather by the violence of it, Elena's fingers tight around hers and their mouths colliding without tenderness, the pure sterling hunger of things like waking up with the smell of blood in your nostrils, everything else dim in the background —just for a second, before they both relaxed and the kiss slid back into honey and sugar.

Caroline let her elbows give out, falling backwards on the bed. For a minute Elena hung over her, eyes wide, mouth bitten and red, her hair falling like a waterfall on both sides of her face. One of her hands was still tangled with Caroline's and the other was splayed on her stomach. It was strange to have Elena loom over her, to watch her lean forward in increments, until they were kissing again, slow and lazy and everything Caroline hadn't felt in a kiss in such a long time. She'd always been one for the bad boys, the dangerous ones, the bruising and bloody kisses; now this?

She trailed her hand up under the T-shirt Elena wore to bed and Elena rode a hard shiver, her back almost arching. Her fingers curled on Caroline's stomach, nails scratching the skin lightly. She probably wasn't doing it on purpose, but Caroline couldn't help a weak moan. Elena's skin was raised in goosebumps, her mouth wet and half-open like she wanted to say something but couldn't think what. This was confusing, but it made sense. Didn't it make sense?

"Relax," Caroline whispered, maybe as much for her own sake as for Elena's.

She saw distinctly the moment Elena gave up: she breathed out very softly, shoulders relaxing, the tension melted out of her and Caroline read on her face a smattering of thoughts, the same that were whirring through her own head, she's my friend and, I love her. Elena pulled her leg up slowly until she was kneeling over Caroline, the sharp bone of her knee just touching the inside of Caroline's thigh, pressing up. Caroline sucked in breath. Elena smiled. Her breasts were round and perfect, nipples hard and visible through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. Elena framed Caroline's face in her hands and rubbed her thumb over Caroline's temple, her ear, the edge of her cheekbone; when they kissed again it was warm and tasted of sugar and had _purpose_ , the heat curling all through Caroline's body until she felt like she was going catch fire if she didn't do something, anything. Elena's fingers sunk into the hair at her temple, still a little wet from the shower. She pulled a little and all of a sudden Caroline was hungry, extraordinarily hungry.

"I hadn't realized I missed it," she said when she flipped them over, Elena landing on the bed with a soft oof and a smile that looked entirely out of place on her face, jittery and wanting. She arched up to bite at Caroline's mouth. Because it was them and they could bite harder and hurt it felt like a caress.

"I'm here for you," Elena murmured, the words passing between their mouths like a promise. Caroline's head was full of white noise.

Kissing Elena felt like getting a good mark, a slow honey spread of contentment that radiated through your whole body, seeping into your bones. Caroline hummed in satisfaction and Elena pulled away to nip at her jaw, her body taut and tense, outlined in suffused blue light. She pressed up, searching for friction. The sun was beating at Caroline's back. Her body felt like it was made only of blood, of primal things like hunger and the instinct to hunker down where there was warmth, a loving hand.

"Cm'on, Care," Elena whined, her eyes glassy. She kept fluctuating between the Elena Caroline knew, corn-fed and semi-innocent, and a completely new person, her back curved there in the darkness, panting for more.

Caroline felt a predatory smile spread across the lips, and underneath her Elena blinked. Caroline closed her teeth on her neck where the pulse was beating strongest —she wouldn't bite her, she decided; too reminiscent— and started sucking a mark there; Elena keened.

By the time Caroline moved on to pressing hot wet open-mouthed kisses to her stomach Elena had stopped trying to be quiet, her arm thrown over her eyes and her mouth open, moaning loud and unashamed. Caroline remembered one night she'd slept at the Salvatore mansion after a drunk evening, hearing them and being amused and turned-on, biting down on her lip when Elena's voice had emerged in the stark obscurity of the house, throaty and almost guttural, _fuck me_.

The fact that this felt like she was finally getting to know the parts of Elena that she couldn't control or disguise as poised selflessness was probably a little fucked-up, but then again fucked-up was pretty much their mot d'ordre these days, so it didn't really matter. It stopped mattering altogether when Caroline pressed her nose to Elena's inner thigh and the smell of arousal hit her like a freight train.

"Come on," Elena repeated, shockingly inelegant. She had to unfold her arms from over her head to get a hold on Caroline's jaw. Caroline looked up. Elena's gaze was unfocused and desperate, beautiful. Caroline thought about surging up to kiss her but Elena wouldn't like the tease. "You gonna eat me out or what?"

Caroline huffed out a surprised laugh. The things you didn't know about your best friends. She wondered what Bonnie would do with that knowledge, Elena's tongue curling around the words, then laughed at how inappropriate the whole thing was.

"What's so funny?" Elena asked, annoyed, her fingers still on Caroline's jaw, nails digging into the flesh a little. Caroline shook her head to dislodge them and said, "Nothing," before leaning forward and touching her lips to Elena through her sodden underwear.

Elena didn't complain much after that, though she kept moaning loudly enough that Caroline worried a little about their neighbors or, like, the hotel staff coming to knock on their door and tell them to turn it down on a notch. But that didn't happen, and by the time Elena came Caroline was trying to rub down on the bedding at the same time and not getting enough friction and Elena's thighs were a vice around her head. Elena tasted sweet and clean and wholesome but the noises she was making were anything but; they sounded like someone was twisting them out of her with a screwdriver, breathy and high-pitched and almost painful. Caroline tried to imagine Stefan in her place and got the sudden urge to laugh. As it turned out, that was what sent Elena over the edge, the electric chuckle that made it all the way through her lips. Elena's hand tightened in the air, grabbing for something that wasn't there. She was surprisingly quiet, just a little punched-out _oh_ , and then her thighs were falling open and Caroline was rising up on her knees, licking her lips and trying to ignore the throbbing between her own thighs. She looked at Elena, naked from the waist down, her mouth red-wet and obscene, hair spilled messily on the pillow like petrol and thought, I didn't even get her bra off.

"I didn't even get your bra off," she said, because arousal had always been hell on her brain-to-mouth filter. Maybe that was why things with Klaus always went so spectacularly wrong.

Elena looked down at herself, dazed. "You didn't," she said. Caroline figured she'd be embarrassed enough to at least try to pull her underwear up, but she didn't. Instead she reached a hand for Caroline, still kneeling between her thighs. "Come here," she said, and before Caroline could even blink Elena's tongue was in her mouth and Elena was undoing the button of her jeans with impressively nimble hands, her other hand first settling at the nape of Caroline's neck and then, when she seemed sure Caroline wasn't going anywhere, drifting down to her back and slipping under her top to undo the fastening of her bra. The little plasticky click sounded too loud in the room, breaking in between their harsh breaths like paper rustling and the moans Caroline could help but let slip. Elena didn't seem like a novice at all, she noticed dazedly.

Still it was strange, doing this with Elena, doing this with her best friend, when she hadn't done it with that many women to begin with —two, once in college and she'd creeped back to her dorm without her usual morning-after swagger, but Elena was still up and she'd just laughed at her and offered her a vat of mango ice-cream and a spoon, claiming she couldn't sleep and Caroline had immediately felt better about liking the sex so much when she was supposed to be straight, even though she never told Elena because she wanted something that was just hers; and another time in the wake of a drinking binge after her first break-up with Tyler, cornering the pretty redhead Yale graduate who worked at The Grill on weekends and fucking her against the wall outside, in the chill, pretending to be more experienced than she was and forgetting to be quiet until the sweat had cooled on her skin and there was enough room in her head for her to think about it, and the girl had kissed her on the lips and said it was okay, that she should go, walk home don't drive—, doing this with _Elena_ , but on the other hand it really wasn't that strange at all. It felt like a natural progression, inevitable, implacable, like it would've happened anyway, even if Caroline hadn't happened to bump lips first into Elena's genetic identical. And Elena had obviously been keeping a few secrets of her own, which was deliciously hypocritical of her —Caroline bit her shoulder and felt Elena smile against her forehead, twisting a nipple between the fingers of one hand and pushing the other one inside her underwear, pushing Caroline's discarded jeans onto the floor with the inside of her naked thigh.

"Is this okay?" she asked sweetly, not teasing at all, and Caroline had to laugh.

"No, I'm just making those noises to make you feel better." She would've rolled her eyes if she hadn't had other things to focus on, namely Elena's fingers sliding wetly against her clit and the sparks of pleasure it sent all the way up Caroline's spine. It was a long time since she'd had good sex that wasn't the result of a fight, actually, was the truth, but—

"Sarcasm isn't attractive," Elena breathed, but there was laughter in her voice and she followed up her words by clucking her tongue to make Caroline raise her arms and take off her top and bra, so Caroline figured she was forgiven.

Caroline didn't know if it was her breasts that made Elena's face suddenly go slack and tender, or something entirely different: either way she forgot it as soon as Elena stopped touching her and raised both her hands to slide them up Caroline's jaw, leaving behind a wet trail that wasn't as uncomfortable as it should've been. Elena pulled at her bottom lip with her teeth, just a light scrape that made Caroline breathe out, hoarse. When she pulled away her eyes were shining.

"You're my best friend," she said, earnest. It should've sounded ridiculous given that they were both mostly naked and Elena's hand had been between Caroline's legs not three seconds ago, but it didn't.

Caroline rested her forehead at the junction of Elena's neck and shoulder, the cloth of Elena's T-shirt bunching against her cheek. "I know," she said, and a tense electric thrill zig-zagged up her body when Elena's hand slid back down and she began working in earnest, with much more expertise than she should've had, massaging Caroline's breast with the blunt end of her nails hurting just right, just enough.

"Elena—" she breathed, cut-off, while Elena shushed her and laughed when Caroline bit down on her shoulder and supported Caroline's slumping body with hers, and Caroline had never been as grateful for Elena, for the way she was Amazonian and unbreakable when you looked close, and her hand tightened around Elena's arm hard enough to leave a bruise, and she came.

Elena trailed her palm on Caroline's chest a bit more, fingers catching at Caroline's still-hard nipple. She nudged Caroline's face up and kissed her, opening her mouth a little for better access. If someone had told Caroline that you could taste a smile she would probably have said, only Elena, and she would've been right. Caroline melted into it, still buzzing with post-orgasm adrenaline and relieved, so relieved Elena wasn't freaking out. Maybe they should've been doing this all along, Caroline thought dazedly. It was the best they'd communicated since they'd left Mystic Falls.

She fell back on the bed, one arm loosely draped around Elena's waist. Elena smiled at her from where she was kneeling on the bed. Then, very deliberately, she slid her fingers into her mouth and licked them.

Caroline hid her face in the pillow, groaning. When she looked back up Elena was grinning like the cat who got the grin, so fucking smug Caroline could've dragged her back down and done it all over again.

"You've been holding out on me, El," she said. "I'm gonna have to take back that lesbian friendship necklace, you know that."

Elena laughed, open and bright. "I know you think I spent seven years pining for you, but that's not actually what happened." She crawled over Caroline, patting Caroline's hip patronizingly, taking care to let her nails graze the skin a little. Caroline felt a swoop of arousal in her stomach —unless it was gladness, she really couldn't tell. "Besides, aren't you happy I learned to eat pussy while you were away? Invaluable friendship skill." Elena's eyes were twinkling.

Caroline cracked one eye open. She felt tired and content, her tragedies relegated to some distant corner of the future. For now it was this: her best friend in bed with her, laughing. "And now you say things 'eat pussy' in conversation, apparently. Wonders never cease."

"Told you, I'm not a saint."

"I'm okay with the trade-off," Caroline said, and she meant it.

Elena slipped off the bed, naked and comfortable; she was humming to herself as she slid into the bathroom and re-emerged with a towel swung around her neck, sunlight splashing all over her as she crossed the room to the bed. Caroline hated Twilight as much as the next girl, but in that moment she almost saw the point of the whole sparkling thing.

"I—" she started. There were no words in her mouth.

Elena arched a round eyebrow, then laughed when she got a look at Caroline's face. "You're one of those people who get sleepy and incoherent after sex, aren't you?" She scrunched her nose up adorably. "Disappointing."

Caroline swung her leg out in a vague attempt to kick Elena which resulted in what could be called, if you were generous, a graze. Elena laughed again.

"And of course you're the chirpy one," Caroline groaned. Elena swatted her lightly with the towel. "Go away."

Elena didn't, of course; she cleaned Caroline up slowly, tender but efficient, and when she was done Caroline felt even more sleepy. She shook her head to wake herself up. "Okay," she said. "Okay, I'm up now." She caught Elena's gaze, her warm grin. "Well, that was fun."

"Yeah," Elena said.

"You want to share your lesbian awakening story, or is that for the next batch of secrets?" She didn't mean to be sharp, but it came out a little sore anyway, the ghost of Elena's painful _no more secrets_ floating between them.

Elena tossed her a pair of underwear, breaking the awkwardness. Caroline put them on, gesticulating not to have to get up. The bed was so comfortable, it wasn't her fault. "Nothing to tell," Elena said with a shrug. "College, vodka, experimenting, isn't that how it usually goes?"

"Remind me again how long you've been in college for," Caroline smirked. "Yeah, that's what I thought. 'Usually' isn't really the norm for us."

Elena couldn't really deny that.

There was a whole day left before their plane, and they spent it in the city, buying supplies for the trip and visiting all the landmarks. They'd both been to New York a few times but had never taken the time to stop and look up, enjoy themselves, always caught up in some crisis. Caroline wasn't afraid to realize that, for all the light-heartedness and joy of it, it was the kind of luxury you granted yourself when you only had a few months left to live. Elena wasn't sure that she'd come back —and could Caroline really blame her? She wasn't sure either. She'd never left the country before, never even been to the Grand Canyon, and now… She still felt too young to be subsumed in something as immense and unpredictable as revenge. But what else was there to do? Katherine was right: this was the path you took when there was no other choice.

"You know what happened with the witches, right," she said to Elena as they huffed and puffed in the stairs of the Statue of Liberty, not really a question. "Bonnie told you everything."

"Yeah," Elena said, turning around to look at Caroline. "Look, Care, I understand. I don't know what I would do if I lost one of them." Stefan or Damon, she meant.

Caroline nodded. In the murky half-darkness of the inside of the statue she couldn't see Elena very well, especially where she was, looming over her, swallowed in the crush of tourists. If they had been alone getting to the top of the statue would have been a cakewalk; it was strange to work for something like that, something as mundane as climbing stairs. 

"You should call him before leaving," she said suddenly. "Hell, maybe you should even call Damon." Though God knows he doesn't deserve it, she thought, but kept on her tongue.

"I left a note," Elena said.

Caroline laughed. Squares of brilliant light were peeking into sight; finally. "Yeah, somehow I don't think that's going to be enough. Come on, El. Woman up!"

Elena was smiling, but she didn't say anything. She twisted an arm around Caroline's shoulder and there they were, standing at the top of the world, watching the ocean through the bars of Lady Liberty's crown. We should have been here a long time ago, Caroline thought, but she couldn't bring herself to regret the moment, the salt-carrying breeze and the smell of stale tourist sweat, the bony warmth of Elena's body against hers.

"I was serious when I said I understood," Elena said in her ear, so close she was almost kissing Caroline's cheek. "I do. I know how much you loved him, and he was the best of us. I would've done the same thing. I'm just glad nothing bad happened to you. I'm sorry you couldn't get him back."

Caroline swallowed the tears and the fury both. Tall order. "Yeah," she managed. "Thank you."

"You know," said Elena in what was probably supposed to be a conversational voice, "I don't know what I'd have done if I'd known about all this stuff when my parents died. At first when I met Stefan I thought it meant there was some kind of justice, some great cosmic plan that gave everything meaning." Her eyes darted to Caroline and she smiled. "I mean, after I was done freaking out over the vampire thing. It just seemed like a great metaphor, like magic: everything has a place where it's supposed to be for the universe to work."

I envy you, Caroline thought. She'd never believed that. She'd thought —she'd thought, great, now this mess has undying freaks with inhuman speed and the ability to grow fangs. As if the world weren't complicated enough.

"And now you've accepted that it's just random and cruel?"

Elena looked at her. Sleeping with her hadn't changed much, Caroline realized, except that now she wasn't just able to say where Elena was in a room with her eyes closed; she could also trace her body's roadmap from memory, the most human thing Elena still had, whatever she wanted to say about it.

"No," Elena said. "I just know you can't wait for things to be handed to you."

"Amen to that," Caroline said, not to her but to the sprawling city, New York purring beyond the ocean's limit.

The afternoon was liquid; Elena finally noticed her haircut and complimented her on it, then insisted that Caroline take her to the hairdresser so that she could get one too. Caroline asked her if she'd said goodbye to Bonnie and Elena said no, that there was no reason to, they wouldn't be gone long enough for Bonnie to miss them, sounding determined and slightly defensive about it. Caroline took her to the same salon she'd been to and chatted with the same guy who'd done her hair —his name was Carlos, she learned— while Elena got her cut. He thanked her for bringing in new customers and told her to take better care of her hair. It wasn't strange because they'd done this before, pretended everything was normal in the middle of an apocalypse, taken a day off from saving the world to go get a pedicure and talk about boys, ignoring petty details like monsters and hunger and people dropping like flies around them. And it was different, of course —how could it not be, when it was Tyler who had died this time, breaking the long trickle of almost-peace— but it still worked.

"It's a little off," said Elena critically, peering at herself in the mirror.

Carlos pouted. "You think? I can make it—" he moved a mass of hair to the side, "like this if you prefer?"

"No. I think I want to cut it. What do you think, Care?"

Caroline looked up from where she had been checking the time of their departure on her phone. "Well, that is what we're here for."

Carlos laughed, and Elena rolled her eyes. "I mean, really cut it. Short, you know, really do that whole indie pixie chick on the run thing?"

Carlos raised an eyebrow but wisely didn't ask.

"You're crazy," Caroline said, but she was laughing. "Certifiably fucking insane."

"Well, I'm not the one who dragged my best friend into an international game of cat and mouse. I'm just talking about cutting my hair, not turning my life upside down." Nice change of pace, said her steady brown eyes.

"You've never had your hair short, Elena," Caroline said. She knew it sounded a little childish, but—but it was Elena, she of the glossy black hair admired by all their fellow cheerleaders; of the high swinging ponytail that would slap you in the face during routines; of the glossy, buttery curls drawing attention to her cleavage in clubs; of the loose braids and topknots when she was studying, bent over an old grimoire. Elena had always looked like Elena.

"Chop it," Elena told Carlos. He snipped his scissors cheerfully and went to work.

Caroline watched, as though under some sort of spell. She only noticed her hand was on Elena's thigh when she saw Carlos's eyes flit to it. She didn't see any reason to move away, so she didn't. Little by little Elena's face, still full and young from her teenage years though Caroline could see where tragedy had carved its discrete scars, remaining traces of sunken cheeks and long dark eyes, emerged from its frame of black hair. Carlos gave her a soft sweeping fringe and everything beneath Elena's ears fluttered to the ground.

"There you go, honey," Carlos said when he was done, flicking the hairdryer off and turning Elena's chair so she could look at herself in the mirror again.

Elena leaned closer to her reflection; she touched her temple with a hesitant finger, smiled at herself as though to make sure it was still her. Then she turned to Carlos. "I like it," she said. "Thanks."

Carlos grinned. "My pleasure. What do you think, girlie?" he asked Caroline.

It sat oddly in her stomach, but Caroline smiled. "Perfect. You look like a grown-up, El. Finally!"

Elena pretended to hit her.

And that was it: that was a day in the lives of Caroline Forbes and Elena Gilbert and if they were aware of living it like they were other people they didn't talk about it, just let the day flow until it was time to go back to the hotel after they had eaten delicious pizza in the street, dripping with cheese. They got margaritas in a bar, licking salt and lemon off their lips without ever taking their eyes off each other, and Caroline tried hard not to think that Elena was her anchor so desperately, that keeping her gaze locked on her was the first step to surviving.

When they were drunk enough Caroline reclined in her seat and said, "What about Jeremy?"

Elena didn't try to play dumb. She sighed, fiddling with her straw. "I missed him," she said, and it was so raw it hit Caroline right where the emptiness was the most stark. For a moment she couldn't speak, but Elena didn't notice. "I was so happy to see him… when he turned up in Bonnie's apartment I thought I would die from happiness." Her lips quirked, bitter, at the irony of the statement. "I didn't remember… I guess I didn't want to remember. How much I love him. It's not like I forgot him during all those years, you know?"

Caroline nodded, even though… well, she'd wondered. With Elena you could never know. Once she applied her will she could bend iron, and sometimes she applied it to the wrong things.

"I—" she faltered, "it felt so good, hugging him. It was him and me, when our parents died, and then with Jenna, and Alaric… We said we'd look after each other. I didn't want to—" her voice cracked on a sob.

Caroline wrapped her in a hug, feeling nausea rise at the bottom of her stomach. "You didn't do anything wrong, El."

"We could've figured something out," Elena said, her eyes wet in the crook of Caroline's shoulder. "We always do, but this time I just… I gave up, he went away and I was so tired, I thought it was over… we could have figured something out. I promised I'd look after him."

"And he's still here," Caroline said. "He's alive. He's happy. He's got Bonnie."

Elena looked up, her mascara melted around her eyes. "Do you think he's happy?"

Caroline heard it, ringing clear as crystal: do you think he's happy without me?

"El…"

Elena shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "It's just… he left." She looked like a doll with her strings cut, and suddenly, selfishly, Caroline wanted to shake her. Get a hold of yourself, she wanted to say. If you can't do it, then how will I?

"He wanted to kill you all the time," she said. "Maybe leaving was the only thing he could do. You did the right thing by letting him go."

Elena didn't say anything; when they came back to the hotel she pushed Caroline against the door and kissed the resistance out of her, and they fucked until it was morning. It was too hot to sleep intertwined but they did anyway, their hold so close that Caroline couldn't have told them apart. Nightmares woke her in the night and even though she thought she'd been careful when she went to splash cold water on her face and stare blankly at the bathroom mirror, trying not to guess in the fogged-up glass the outline of Tyler's body, she came back to Elena sitting up on the bed, smiling a painful smile at her. Caroline sat on the side of the bed and cried pathetically like a kid, sobbing "Oh my God oh my God" under her breath, and Elena wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the skin there, then her throat, her collarbones, the swell of her cheek. It was everything her words had done before scattered to new territory, the soft edgeless reassurance she was so good at. Eventually she framed Caroline's face between her hands and Caroline could barely say, "I should've known you'd use sex to shut me up," trying her best to sound cheerful, before Elena had pressed her open mouth to Caroline's like a band-aid to a gushing wound.

"Thank you," Caroline said incoherently later, when Elena's head was buried between her thighs, the slow outpouring of pleasure flowing over the pain, "thank you thank you thank you—" 

Elena's fingertips traced a word over Caroline's ribs, light, but Caroline couldn't concentrate enough to decipher it. Once she had come she watched as Elena stroked herself dutifully, a small smile floating over her face even as her eyelids fluttered closed. She felt sleep cover her; the last thing she did was draw Elena to her when she fell on the mattress in an undignified sprawl of limbs, soft as butter.

Since the plane was in the early afternoon they spent the morning in bed. They ordered room-service, laughing at the bellboy's shock-slack face when Elena went to open the door in her half-open robe, hair still mussed from sleep, her long, too-pale legs emerging from underneath the cloth. Usually at this time of the year Elena would've been spending all her time outdoors, running around doing charitable things, organizing parties, being generally sociable and in love and heroic. In the summer she got tanned and golden, but not this time. The Peruvian sun would take care of that, Caroline thought. An uncomfortable feeling settled in her stomach as she realized that she was thinking of their trip more and more as a vacation. The day before while they were shopping for supplies Elena had suggested water-rafting absently and though Caroline had laughed at the idea she'd considered it —was still considering it. Why not, while they were there? Tyler had helped her accept the idea that you couldn't compartmentalize life, that moments came and you had to take them for what they were, make the most out of them. Still, it felt undignified. Tyler wasn't there to give advice anymore; Tyler was dead.

They stayed in bed talking and kissing lazily until the clock ran out on them. Well —it was three hours before the phone took off, and Elena said that they _had_ to go now otherwise they would be late, even though Caroline knew that what they would actually be was hideously early. She didn't relish spending more time than absolutely necessary in airports, if she was being honest, but she owed Elena for coming in the first place, and indulging her was an old habit. She helped Elena round up their stuff, then make the bed —"Elena, there's a cleaning service. It's a hotel." "It doesn't mean we shouldn't help them as much as we can."— and they went to pay at the front desk. The eyes of the woman at the desk passed on them like a whisper.

The ride to the airport was made in silence. During the last few days, and despite everything that had happened —so much had happened—, it had been convenient to forget exactly why they were here. Coming to New York to chase down Klaus was nothing but a variation of what they'd done all their lives: hunting monsters to keep the world on its tilt. This was different. This was taking a plane to the other side of the world and it was a risk and it was revenge. Had they still been teenagers Elena would have said no, wouldn't even have considered going. Now she had learned more about the worth of grief, but she was still uncertain. Caroline doubted much else than Elena's love for her —which now declined in such strange and wonderful colors, the pink arch of her mouth, the pale red of abused flesh, the dark hair flowering in the vee of her legs— went into her decision to follow her. Somehow it meant more than everything.

When they had gone through the check-ins, had their bags opened and searched —Caroline had to use a little compulsion while Elena wasn't looking to hide the knife; she tried not to think about the fact that she still hadn't told her about it—, been patted in places Caroline usually preferred people she wasn't sleeping with didn't pat her, and found their departure gate, there were still some two hours to wait before they could embark. Caroline told Elena she was going to get a magazine for the flight. She hovered in front of the stacks for a while, then decided on _Vogue_ again, even though the leggy, unsmiling blonde on the cover made her heart constrict as she remembered stealing the previous issue to block out the mute horror of having to run away from Tyler's body.

When she turned around, Klaus was smiling at her, hands in his pockets.

"You're here," Caroline said, once her heart had stopped lurching painfully forward like a dog trying to return to its master and settled back into her ribcage.

"Well spotted," said Klaus.

"How did you get through check-in?" Caroline asked, the only thing she could think about.

Klaus tilted his head, looking annoyed. He didn't say anything. Of course he could get through check-ins, Caroline thought. He had been killing for centuries and no-one had ever noticed; and he was still here today, standing in front of her. The light was hitting his hair.

Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do you really have nothing else to do but stalk me?"

Klaus crossed the distance between them in one step, his smile not faltering one bit. "I think we both know that's a bit unfair, love. And don't you agree that it's time we stop pretending you don't want to see me? I have seen you uncovered."

Caroline couldn't control the shiver that vibrated through her spine. Klaus's smile got wider.

"I'm leaving in," she pretended to look up at the giant clock, "fourteen minutes, so if you have something actually interesting to say, now's the time. Otherwise please get out of my way."

"One day there won't be any more places to run away to, darling," Klaus said conversationally, even as he took a step to the side to let her pass him. She didn't.

"I'm not running away. Not that you'd know anything about doing the right thing," she said, and Klaus laughed because it was just like one of those days ten years ago, down to the halo of light on him and the simmering fury in her bones, hot like molten metal with the desire to run into his arms like running into a knife. Still, "I'm doing the right thing," she hammered in. "The only thing."

"I don't doubt that for a minute," Klaus said, a smirk curling at the edge of his mouth. The clock was ticking overhead. "I just came to try my hand at getting you to stay once more."

The words hung in the air. He was honest, but unkind; she thought, what would he do with me if I decided to stay? and couldn't wrap her mind around it.

"Fat chance," she laughed, only slightly unbalanced. The announcement rang: _We welcome you to_ Avianca, _flight 1875 with service to Cusco and Lima. Please check your boarding pass to confirm your seat assignment and verify that your bags have been tagged._ "But you do like lost causes."

He had come alone. In the crowd he didn't even look like a ticking bomb, just a man saying goodbye. Book and their covers, huh? She used to be afraid —she used to _hope_ — that one day he wouldn't let her go.

He said, "I got you to drop your armor, didn't I?"

"Did you? The way I remember it, I married Tyler." Pain lanced through her at the words, still unexpected, but she was careful not to let it show.

Klaus looked like he didn't know whether to be tender or furious. "So you did. I might grow bored of chasing after you, Caroline." It sounded like a threat. It might be one, or it might be that he threatened people so often the color had just bled onto his voice permanently.

"I hope so," said Caroline. "Are we done now?"

"Not quite," said Klaus, and before Caroline could react his fingers were digging into her hip and she was pressed up against him, his lips crushed over hers. Except for that first time in Tyler's skin, he had never taken this from her when she hadn't wanted it, and this was no different. How could he tell? she wondered now, just a second before she surrendered. Did she want him always? For a moment —the length of a breath— she kept her eyes open to make sure that Elena couldn't see them, and then she closed them and let herself go.

And this is taking, she thought, because it was; she had healed the cuts in her lips with honey and Klaus was re-opening them, letting her hold onto the hard bones of his jaw and bring him closer, devour him, suck out of him all the strength he was ready to give her. He hadn't thought she might stay, but he had hoped: that was all he ever did. Like all the people who want to be gods hard enough he had endeavored to make a dream into matter. It had worked for him in the past. He wanted to give flesh and bone —and teeth, more often than not— to all the petty resentments accumulated over a lifetime of disappointment and rage and misused power. Caroline should've despised him for it, but she didn't. He had built a city from the ground up, and he had survived, he was still here to hold her close and kiss her, his fury intact. What couldn't he do? He would succeed, in time; after all he had eternity to achieve his goals. He was angry and he kissed her like she deserved neither pity nor compassion; like he was willing to love her only should she be the most—the most—

She moaned into the kiss. Someone touched her shoulder, a hard, prodding finger that wanted to berate her for her indiscretion, so she whirled their bodies around and slammed Klaus blindly into a wall where she could feel shadows raining, the dusty tickling half-darkness of a nook no-one paid attention to. Klaus's fingers tightened possessively on her hips.

"Say when," he said as he pressed one open-mouthed kiss after the other to her collarbone, white-hot and unbearable. For a handful of seconds the words didn't make sense to Caroline at all until she pieced them out and got the urge to hit Klaus in the face.

But she didn't; and she didn't say when, either, not when he bit the side of her neck and not when his fingers crept under her top, not when he keened at her fingers closing around the nape of his neck and _squeezing_ , hard, not even when she realized that mouth-watering scent was the smell of fresh blood and something flared in her stomach that could've been either nausea or bone-melting arousal.

She could feel the clock ticking in her bones; Elena was waiting; Klaus's lips came back to her mouth and were surprisingly soft, a light ache like those bullet wounds you don't notice until the battle is over and the adrenaline has tamped down, too preoccupied by larger disasters.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," he said when he pulled back, one hand anchored at her waist. He was holding her magazine, Caroline noticed: it was dangling from his other hand, pinched between his thumb and his forefinger.

She breathed out. Her lips felt sore. "What, so I'll come back here and decide you're a good guy after all?"

Klaus's eyes were a changing color. They were brown with flecks of green, and black hidden underneath. They looked like he couldn't decide what to do with her, like he was utterly at a loss for words. That wouldn't do, though. He always had to have something to say.

"I'm not," he said. "But maybe once you've taken your revenge you'll realize that there is more to the world than good and evil. There is—" he stopped.

He was afraid, Caroline realized, afraid of her: he didn't want to give her too much because he was afraid then there would be no more reason for her to come running, gnawing at his edges to get something out of him. She didn't know him: if she did she might realize the limits of his wickedness; then why would she travel to New York to interrogate him, knock out his cronies and drink wine with him?

"There is more to darkness than death, Caroline," he said at last. "It is simply where things people don't want to see hide until it is their time. There is nothing evil about it. People are just afraid; they refuse to look darkness in the eye."

Caroline laughed, bitter, shook her head. "So that's how you justify what you do to yourself —some pithy remark about good and evil?"

"I don't need justifications, love. I'm not ashamed of anything. Why do you think we have fangs if not to use them?"

"I'm not a philosophy major, but even I can tell that logic is pretty faulty," Caroline snarked. She looked around her, searching for escapes. She could have just walked away, but her feet felt rooted to the ground.

"Think what you wish," said Klaus. "Just—" at this point he did something she wouldn't have expected from him: he leaned forward brutally and took her hand, pressed his open lips to the back of it, fangs grazing her knuckles, a hard, desperate kiss, only gentlemanly in appearance, "don't think to die."

"I won't," said Caroline, unsettled.

Klaus remained bent over her hand, but he sneaked a glance up at her, dark and penetrating. "You seemed determined on not coming back empty-handed," he said, almost softly.

"I won't do that either," Caroline said. He should know, she thought. He should know what it's like to set those kinds of goals for yourself. Except —well, it was different, wasn't it? It had to be. After all she was doing it for the right reasons. Her revenge had purpose. His had been— territorial. Of course she was right.

Still.

For a moment he looked like he might admonish her, tell her to be careful, not to take undue risks, advice she wouldn't have taken even if he had given it, but he didn't. He kept his mouth shut and seemed to remember who he was, and smiled, the lush curve of his lips against the skin of her fingers and she shivered a little: "A vampire after my own heart," he said, and let her go.

Or —well, at least he didn't insist on talking anymore. But as he was rising and Caroline was already walking away in thought, trying to catch up on her undoubtable lateness —they had to get onto this plane, they _had_ to— he seemed to get caught up in her again, and he hurtled forward into her chest, reaching at the last minute to frame her face into his hands, his thumbs swiping roughly over her cheeks. For a few moments he didn't kiss her and seemed to have no intention to, just running his fingers over her jaw as though trying to find something hidden inside the bone. His eyes were wide and confused. He watched her tilt her head and smile, a lightning-quick silvery thing it would be easy to deny had ever happened. She darted forward.

She had always kissed him —always: three times now—, once she got over her scruples, too fast, with the swallowing fury of those who are running out of time, because she was. The first time it had been the floating limits of the day, how many minutes until her friends noticed she was missing (there, too, was a decision to make between what she wanted to think and the truth, which was that they sometimes forgot about her, forgot how dangerous the things chasing after them were, because they had burned into their minds an image of her irrevocably stained with a stench of worthlessness), until the sun dunked under the trees' edge, until she realized what she was doing — _finally_. The first time had been like that, and the second it had been even worse, because it was the same thing with higher stakes, Tyler waiting for her downstairs, her mother reaching out a hand to walk her down the aisle, and still she had done it. When she stopped making an effort not to remember she could still feel the kinetic energy driving her touch back then, the force of a body slamming forward into a windshield; and now… well, now it was the same situation all over again. She did want to eat him whole, the background carnivorous instinct, desperate: thinking, if I do then there will be nothing left of him. Though she should know better: wasn't there always a way to come back for those no one wanted to see again?

"You're thinking," Klaus said, his thumb pushing her top lip hard against the side of her fang, and the sharp jolt of pain as it sliced the flesh woke her up. She snarled, her lip rolling up, but Klaus was still too close. He kissed her back, and Caroline let herself be swept in it.

He was slumped against her with startling vulnerability, his body open to any attacker —which was what enabled her to turn them halfway around so that she had a shoulder leant against the wall and his face against hers, never taking the time to breathe for realism between kisses, so utterly inhuman —so that she could run away when she chose. He wouldn't hold her back, she didn't think. She couldn't even pretend to want to worm her hand between them, worry that white oak stake into his heart for old time's sake; he would let her go because there was a more pregnant danger for both of them, his jealous timeless heart and the responding instinct in her ribcage, something she was reluctant to name.

When everything in the world had dimmed to only leave in her consciousness the bright needle-tip of him, a selfish blaring blue spark of a flame, Caroline finally pulled back. She blinked twice, a little hazy; dazedly, she noticed that she had deepened the scratches at his neck while they were kissing, and they were sweating with dark blood. Her fingertips were black too when she looked down. He saw the movement and grinned, savage.

His hands flexed on her hips, bringing them close again, pressing bruises in the unbruisable skin. When he finally consented to taking a step back, showing his reluctance in the drag of his feet over the hard airport floor, he touched the side of his neck absently, where Caroline's scratches hadn't quite healed over yet. His eyes were dark and shining with strange, bottomless joy.

"You're welcome here anytime," he said at last, his hands back in his pockets, leaning backwards with characteristic nonchalance.

A laugh startled out of her. "I'd rather die of thirst."

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away and couldn't help but think that, hadn't she been as inhuman as him, a monster with coarse unbreakable skin, he might have burned a hole through her. She forced her mind back to Tyler: she had felt the same thing with him, once, when they were hiking. She had only agreed to go after hours of nagging and a compromise that included a lot of expensive clothing for her, but she remembered that out there she had felt good, better than she'd expected, the clean cold air sluicing over her face. She'd almost forgotten she was a vampire and Tyler must have too, because she remembered his gaze like a bullet on her back when she had slipped and almost plummeted head-first into a ravine, the rocks jagged and sharp at the bottom. But as soon as she'd gotten back to him he had held her tight, kissed her cheek, and the bullet had melted into warm metal, soft like butter. Which —she liked warmth better, didn't she? The easy affection. It was better, healthier, and it was what she wanted. What she _had_ had, because she'd made her choice, what she would still have if—

"Come back," she heard behind her, a flat, level-voiced declaration —he was certain she would hear. There was no pleading in his voice. She couldn't help but picture him like she had left him just a minute ago, staring after her with his hands in his pockets, artfully slouching, powerful; she resisted the urge to turn back to check if she was right.

When she got back to the gate Elena wasn't alone. They weren't talking —Elena was busy pretending to search for something in her backpack, even though Caroline knew for a fact that she had packed and repacked every item until she knew its location by heart—, but it was Hayley standing by her side, her arms crossing, looking faintly anxious. Hayley's face lit up when she saw Caroline; Caroline wondered, somewhat unkindly, if she thought they had become friends.

"You smell like—" Hayley said when she came closer, frowning, but Caroline shot her a significant look and she promptly shut up. Elena hadn't noticed anything, her nose still in her backpack—maybe she really had found something interesting there. Then again, she was probably just re-bagging all her shampoo like her usual OCD self. Caroline could relate.

"Hey, Hayley," she said, a little awkwardly. "I—welcome back?"

Hayley flushed. "I wanted to say goodbye, that's all," she said. "Elijah mentioned—"

"I'm glad you found him," Caroline said. Playing up the charade was ridiculous —she was fairly certain Hayley knew she had been there in the club that same night— but it was better than acknowledging the facts.

Hayley grinned. "You too," she said, pleased with her joke, and then her face fell back into its usual expression, shut and intense. She really had changed a lot since their first meeting ten years ago. Hardened —but hadn't they all?

"Yeah," said Caroline. "The address helped a lot. Thanks for that."

"Don't ever snoop in my things again," piped in Elena, her fangs bared just that bold smidgen, "or I will kill you."

"Someone's touchy," Hayley said. "Maybe now's the time to start working on those reflexes." Elena rose, shoulders thrown back, menacing even though her fangs were tucked away; Caroline resisted the urge to sigh. There was no reason for them to hate each other so fiercely. But they kept glaring at each other, and they looked about ready to fight it to the death over the importance of respecting boundaries when Caroline threw in, "I'm glad you came."

They both turned towards her, distracted from their anger. Hayley's face softened at the edges, her lips stretching in a small smile; Elena just scowled harder.

"Me too," said Hayley. "Thanks for letting me hitch a ride. You didn't have to take me with you, and I would have managed anyway, but it was…" She looked down. "Better. With you. I'm… I'm probably not going to be here when you come back, so I just wanted to say thank you."

Elena rolled her eyes. "God forbid you'd be anything less than perfectly self-sufficient," she muttered. It rang loudly between them; Caroline was silent. Didn't know what to say, how to respond. Sometimes —sometimes she forgot that she'd known Hayley for ten years. It had just been a handful of days then, and Caroline had been preoccupied with other things. Most of the time it felt the whole of their acquaintance amounted to three days, twelve hours in a car and two nights in a hotel.

"You're welcome," she said at last, throat hurting a little with emotion. She'd never cared for Hayley before, but now, leaving her here— "Do you know what you're going to do now?"

An announcement blinked overhead and people started filing in front of the ticket check. Elena was fiddling with the strap of her bag. Hayley was too, actually: it was more noticeable with her because the charms were catching with tinkling metal sounds, bumping against her fingers. Caroline tried to figure out a way to give her back the one Elena had stolen without causing WWII, but she came up blank. When they came back, maybe… _if_ —

Hayley shrugged. "Who knows. The world is my oyster. There are a lot of things to do."

"Tyler used to think that too. Sometimes he got discouraged because there were too many people to help. But he still thought…" She let the sentence trail off. So Tyler thought that everyone could be saved, he thought everyone deserved a second chance—what good had that done him? Even Elena didn't think that anymore. "Didn't you used to run with a pack in the Appalachians?"

Hayley nodded. "Yeah. That's where I met him."

"What was he like?" Caroline asked. Of course it was faintly awkward, talking about him with Hayley, but there was no time for jealousy now —now Caroline was just greedy for more memories of him, images to feed her sadness.

"Different," Hayley said hesitantly. "He told me he lived in a trailer park in Florida."

"And you believed him?"

Elena tugged on her arm with a whispered _we have to go_. Caroline felt fear seizing her stomach. They had to go; they would go. Caroline hadn't thought she would be afraid at all, at least not until they got there, but she was. She looked up and caught a glance between Elena and Hayley, surprisingly neutral —as if as Hayley could relate, as if she knew about that fear too, that catching disease of anxiety freezing the inside of your body. It was something not to acknowledge: the three of them fared better in the glass world of pretending. It was kinder that way; that way nothing had to break, not yet.

"I had no reason not to," said Hayley.

Caroline laughed. "The thousand-dollar tan and the J Crew sweaters didn't clue you in?"

But Hayley didn't laugh back. She said, "He looked lost," and Caroline choked on it like you would choke on something whose taste you didn't expect on your tongue, sudden, overwhelming, her eyes swelling with tears.

Hayley took an aborted step forward, her hand shooting up then falling before she could touch Caroline; she clenched her jaw. "I'm sorry," she said, ignoring Elena's redoubled glower. "He did, though. But—" she looked around her, as though she were about to say something shameful, "I don't think he was lost with you."

With me, maybe not, thought Caroline, powerless to stop it; but to me?

"We have to go," she said, threading her fingers with Elena's without thinking, because she was there —Hayley's eyes darted to their joined hands but she didn't comment, just interrupted, before they could walk away, said, "I'm gonna get out of it."

"Out of what?"

"This," said Hayley, gesturing to the wide expanse of the airport, "the whole thing. The whole shitshow. I've had my dose, you know. A lifetime supply of Mikaelson-created chaos." She grinned, sudden and hopeful. "I thought you'd like to know."

"So what," said Elena, half mean and half plain curious, "you're just going to run away?"

Hayley shrugged, her shoulders loose. "It's not running away if you've got nothing to run away from," she said, grin still hovering like an afterthought at the edges of her mouth, "is it?"

"Aren't you—"

"No. I'm not." She laughed, open-throated and a little raw. "Sorry," she said then, looking back at Caroline and Elena. Her eyes were shining. "I don't want you to miss your plane. Good luck with everything. This was selfish, me coming here."

"No shit, Sherlock," said Elena, but for once it sounded faintly fond. Maybe it was just leaving, though. Leaving made you want to hold onto everything, even the things you hated, you were so afraid to step into water too deep.

"You'll be fine," said Caroline, stepping forward to fold Hayley into an awkward hug. She didn't know where to start from, though, whether to grab onto Hayley's hips or if would that too intimate, catch her at the nape of her neck and bring her close, or maybe she should just grab her shoulder, palm the expanse of skin between her collarbones. She didn't want to spook her; Hayley was still a wolf after all, and a nervous one at that. Not that— they were all a little jumpy these days. So in the end it was more like they'd walked into each other, Caroline's front smushed against Hayley's, their hands clawing too hard for comfort, slightly desperate. The faint, elegant snort behind them —Elena— made Caroline wonder if Klaus had left or if he was still watching her from somewhere in the airport, hoping she'd miss her flight and go back to him. (But —no. He knew her better than that by now. If you thought about it their relationship was almost Victorian, touching every ten years, the rest of it a dissipated longing and sharp, hateful conversations.)

"Likewise," said Hayley when she pulled away. "I mean, you'll be fine, obviously. I trust you to rip those fuckers apart, Barbie."

Even if she'd tried, Caroline couldn't have laughed, so she just flipped her hair back. It felt strange with that new haircut, unbalanced.

"Count on it."

Hayley hovered in front of her for a moment, but there was nothing more to say; her gaze darted to Elena and Elena didn't quite smile, didn't tell her to go away either, but Hayley did, just a flash of her dark eyes and then she'd disappeared in the crowd, and Caroline realized she hadn't said where she was going, if she even knew. Maybe she didn't want anyone finding her. It made sense, didn't it? _I'm gonna get out of it._ Caroline spared a second to wish, with almost absurd fierceness, that she would, and then she turned to Elena and smiled; let go of her hand only to tangle their arms together, the strap of her bag cutting into the meat of her shoulder. Anything to be beautiful, she thought; anything to be brave, to be better.

"Where to?" she asked, the smile hurting her mouth.

The queue was down to the last two passengers checking in: a teenager with bright purple headphones and a bag that looked like it was made of hemp and an professorly Mexican couple standing close, the woman with a book open over her heart and the man wearing sharp, pointy glasses.

Elena pressed into her. "Who knows," she said, but before the glacial fear could take its hold on Caroline, she added, in that fervent tone she got sometimes when she knew whatever came next was going to be yet again the hardest thing she'd ever done, "but together."

Caroline wanted to tease her for being cheesy, try to relax the atmosphere —she felt so wound up she felt she might explode like glass squeezed to hard—, but she couldn't. Instead she took a step forward. The check-in sign was blinking urgently, the queue winding. The flight attendants were looking back inside the plane. Elena's knuckles were white, her fingers too tight on Caroline's arm. She started walking forward too.

This would be it, Caroline thought; this would be the end of it. This would make the wound better, act in time's stead, soften the blow, smooth the rough edges. This would be a sort of victory, to get vengeance —and it would work, it had to, there was no other alternative. Yes —this would be it.

One step closer. For the first time since that hellish morning in the woods, Caroline felt like the glass was filling up.


End file.
